Michael Roebuck's Blog

I like a good joke every now and then. I think it started while in college. My best friend Don and I ordered his mother the Christmas Collection of songs by Nat King Cole. We ordered it off a television commercial where you just selected "COD" as the shipping method. Well, needless to say, his mother did not find the humor in it and gave us both a piece of her mind. I don't think she sees the humor in it today either, 15 years later. But I do like comedy. Don and I knew every word of Eddie Murphy and could recite virtually every word of "Delirious" and others.

A few recent pranks include an electronic beeper that let out an audible "chirp" every few minutes. Karl Ribas and I stuck it in an employee's tissue box and drove her crazy for a couple hours. She retaliated when she found it by hiding it in my office for the rest of the day. It really was annoying and I haven't used it since.

My best prank here was again with Karl. We took the FM Transmitter to his MP3 player and set it for the local radio station. A group of office workers sit in a large room adjacent to my office and there radio was directly outside my office. We set his MP3 player to play the same song over and over again all day. After a while they realized the same song was playing over and over again and it really got interesting. Every time they changed the radio station, I'd adjust the transmitter to the channel. Eventually they even called the radio station to complain.

Well, recently I bought the domain, NinjaDeathSquad.com as a fun outlet for everyone to play with. Several employees use terminology like "quick, like a ninja" and various others so this would be a good alternative play site when stressed (outside work hours of course). It is evolving into a practical joke site and I wanted to be one of the first to contribute to the coming list of pranks. And since I wasn't officially a "Founding Four Ninja," I decided to play a joke on the Ninja's. Here was my work:

Objective: Play a practical joke on the founding four Ninja Death Squad members. Using voice changing technology, I was going to pose as a potential client and have a web site designed and promoted. This would involve all members at some point. I wouldn't be just any client though. I'd be from "The Jerky Boys" and claim to want a new web site and some PPC promotion done. Nicole, an outspoken member of the Ninja Death Squad is a huge fan of The Jerky Boys and has every CD as well as often quotes them throughout her workday. To think she had the opportunity to work with them and then find out it was all a joke would really cheese her off! This was also very feasible as the Jerky Boys web site had many images that didn't load and is the only web site I've ever seen that didn't load when the "www" was included in the URL. Usually it's the other way around.

Plan

Step 1: Submit a Proposal Request from a fictitious "Mark Stiller - Marketing Director for The Jerky Boys."

Step 2: Request outrageous features while insulting the staff regularly with Jerky Boy quotes learned from Nicole.

Step 3: Immediately preceding final publishing of new web site and PPC promotion, log in and change everything to read "Compliments of a NITWIT" (A NITWIT is a "Ninja In Training With Intensive Teachers" or basically anyone who is not one of the founding four Ninja's.)

Detailed Description

The plan, while solid in theory, did not turn out as expected. I had hoped to only need the support of my administrative assistant to claim a contract was signed and fees paid in order for the work to start. To my dismay, a series of unfortunate events had unfolded and transformed my plan to wreck havoc on all 4 Ninja Death Squad members to just one; Nicole. I didn't really want to play a joke on her alone, but the ball was rolling and it was too late to turn back now. I had to run with it.

The primary setback was voice changing technology. I had a service that would change my voice so they would not know it was me, but it sounded like a computer and would never pass as a live person. I needed an alternate plan fast! I turned to email. I had to submit an email request on a day that Ninja Kelly would get the request. But her Ninja senses were tingling and the request was sent to Michelle. She escaped being duped! Since Michelle was not a mark, I had to let her in on my little plan. I didn't want her spending time on a fictitious client but wanted her to keep passing comments on to Nicole. She reluctantly agreed to help.

The afternoon before this started, I had warned Ninja Karl that I was going to run a scam on the Ninja's and he should watch his back. He had warned the other Ninja's of my threat and since my voice technology failed, I thought I had better include him in my plan so he wouldn't challenge the odd proposal request and catch my hoax. But would he play along or would he warn Nicole and turn my joke against me? Only time would tell. I had to trust him. Therefore, because of these mishaps, Ninja Kelly narrowly escaped and because Ninja Karl was with me, this meant Ninja Jessica was safe. Everything from now on would be to play the best practical joke on Ninja Nicole. But I must work fast as too many people now knew this was a joke and not the real deal. If I let too much time go by, people could talk and accidentally let the joke out. Or worse, decide to let Nicole in on the plan and find a way to turn it around on me.

Because of the time issue and the fact she was now the only mark, I decided not to insult Nicole with Jerky Boy comments but to just have her set up a full PPC campaign that I could sabotage. That would have to be sufficient. I told Michelle that we needed a list of keywords ASAP in order to start the PPC campaign on Tuesday.

The plan was running smoothly. Ninja Nicole frantically prepared a keyword research report for the fictitious "Mark Stiller" on Friday before the long Memorial Day holiday. Tuesday, when we all returned to work, I had Michelle tell her to write the PPC ad copy for final approval. Later that day, I received an instant message from Ninja Karl:

Ninja Nicole had set up a Jerky Boys Adwords Account and I set up a dedicated email for the account. After reading Karl's message, I didn't think he was going to inform Nicole about the prank and I probably had a little more time to fine tune things. I decided to play with her just a bit more.

By now, Ninja Nicole had sent Michelle a copy of the Google PPC Ad and she had sent it to me. I replied that I thought it was too offensive for the readers and we didn't want to call potential customers, "Jerk." She needed to tone it down a bit. Her ad read like this:

The new ad that was less offensive would read like this:

To buy myself a bit more time while deciding upon how to end this charade, I had Michelle ask Ninja Nicole how much this ad was going to cost. This should really cheese her off because she's really anxious to get this ad running and really wants to talk to this mysterious "Mark Stiller." Imagine if your favorite icon was just within reach but not close enough to talk to. She's ready to talk to Mark and find out anything she can about her beloved Jerky Boys. Did I mention she has a Jerky Boys Ring Tone and Jerky Boys dialogue while listening to her cell phone ring? Remember the movie "Misery?" Ninja Nicole is the Jerky Boys' Annie Wilkes (Kathy Bates). She's there biggest fan!

The cost question and offensive ad suggestion turned out to be rather anti-climactic. A nice reply was generated stating cost is determined by clicks yadda yadda ya. No big deal. It's time to end this thing. Poor Ninja Nicole needs to be allowed to get on with her day without any further disruptions from the peanut gallery. Here's what I did. Once Ninja Nicole went to lunch, I logged into her Adwords account and changed all the keywords to include reference to NITWIT's and Ninja's. Then I changed the ad to read:

Once Nicole returned from lunch, I told her I had spoken with the fictitious Mark Stiller and he gave us authorization to run the ads. Nicole logged in, saw that I edited her keywords and ad group and started laughing. A few choice words later, she started correcting my additions, still unaware the entire account was a joke. Karl and I looked at each other not knowing what to do next. I finally said the entire account was a joke. There was a pause. Then even more choice words as she shook her head knowing she'd been had.

Remember, Nicole loves the Jerky Boys so it shouldn't have surprised me to find out that she had told her friends and family that she was going to work on their advertising. This prank will have affected people many layers deep. I kind of feel bad for Ninja Nicole. She didn't really ask for this and everyone else who was supposed to be pranked got out of it by some reason or another. But Nicole is one tough cookie. I wonder what she'll do? No doubt she'll devise her revenge. I wonder what it will be? Will she start immediately or wait a week or month? Will she enlist the help of the staff or will she run solo? Will she retaliate against me or the Ninja's who helped me? Only time will tell. I guess everyone will just have to watch their backs for a while.

But whatever happens, I'll always remember the look in her eyes and the expression on her face when she muttered her final words to me, "It's on now!"

Several weeks ago I had the opportunity to play with a video iPod for a week. I must admit that it is the cat's meow. So much so, that I bought two: one for the company to share and one for my family to share. (Ok, I don't really plan on sharing mine with the family but it sounds good.) I didn't buy them because it's the hot new trend, but because it's really functional and helps me with work.

We all know we can play our music on these machines and I have a Dell MP3 player which I truly like, but one simple feature turns this little portable hard drive into a daily must have. It's becoming almost as much a part of my life as my cell phone or wife. Let me explain.

PodCasts
A PodCast is simply a digital commentary. Like a radio program. I subscribe to numerous SEO type PodCasts and they automatically get downloaded to my iPod every day and after I listen to them, they get automatically deleted. It's completely hands off and worry free for me. I use an FM Transmitter to transmit the sound from my iPod to my car radio. No wires, no mess! This way, I can drive to work in the morning and listen to "Mr SEO" and drive home listening to the latest news headlines from "The Onion."

I bought a smaller iPod for the employees to share for this purpose. We can listen to podcasts on the way to and from work and when we travel.

Use an FM Transmitter to get the sound from the iPod to your car radio. For my Dell, I used a Belkin FM Transmitter that plugged into the cigarette lighter. I now use an iTrip by Griffin Technology that plugs into the iPod dock connector and runs off the iPod power. No need to plug anything in.

Note though, that many of these podcasts are very informal. I specifically mention Mr. SEO because Joe Balestrino actually teaches as he talks. You will learn something from his podcast is he is quite entertaining. Many of the other podcasts contain more industry gossip, news and fluff than actual content you can use. But you should monitor them as well. At the bottom, I'll list a few of the PodCasts that I subscibe to.

Additional iPod Benefits
Movies
Convert your DVD movies to iPod format: http://www.cucusoft.com. This beautiful program rips my DVD movies so they play on my video iPod. I bought an AV Cable from Radio Shack for about $15 and now when I travel, I can watch movies. When I'm at a hotel or in the motor home, I use the AV cable to watch the movies on the full screen TV. The resolution is not perfect, but certainly good enough to watch a movie. Each movie is about 1GB so on my 60GB iPod, I can carry about 30 movies with me at all times. Completely eliminating the need to bring DVD's or a DVD player with me when I travel. SWEET!!

Why buy an iPod instead of just downloading the PodCasts to a regular MP3 player? That was my first question as well. I would download these podcasts to my computer and then upload them to my Dell MP3 player, but finding them was a pain. Then, when I listened to the podcast I had to manually delete it from my music library. The iPod has a section specifically titled, "PodCast" and all the podcasts are neatly filed away under the respective headings. I have it set to delete podcasts that have been listened to. This way it's done automatically and I don't have to remember anything. Buying an iPod is a huge time saver and convenience.

A few PodCasts I subscribe to
Mr. SEO
Danny Sullivan Daily Searchcast
SEO Rockstars
Wizards of Web

My friend and Colleague, Karl Ribas originally posted about a company called, "Communicate2" who was bidding on his name in Google. Karl Ribas.com Blog: Schmuck Company Buys My Name.

I find it a compliment that someone thinks that highly of him to want to buy his name. He tended to be a bit negative stating he thought his name was worthless. My reply is if his name was worthless, why are people buying it and why does he have so many subscribers to his blog titled under his name? But I digress. This isn't a post on how worthless Karl is or isn't.

This is about the many schmuck companies that try to achieve success by riding the coat tails of others. The amusing ones fall for tests that have been done specifically to mislead the misleaders! "Example #2" is an example of this.

Example #1: (on right)

Company: Communicate2

Description: Expanding on Karl's complaint. As you can see by the image on the right, compiled of Google Adwords listings as of May 8, 2006 as shown when searching for employee names, this company has bought almost every All Web Promotion employees' name with Google Pay Per Click. I thank them for seeing our company for quality work and wanting to capitalize on our good names, but if they went to the trouble to try to list every employee, why did they omit Kelly? Kelly is one of the leading Yahoo! Merchant Solutions designers and I would think her name would be equally as valuable. At least more valuable in generating Internet leads than my administrative assistant would be. (No offense to my Administrative Assistant)

Example #2:

Company: All the companies in the below image who have optimized pages within their Web Sites for a chance of ranking when someone searches my good name.

Let me explain. A while back I was testing various theories for inflating keyword popularity within the Overture (Now Yahoo!) Keyword Selector Tool. I took numerous variations of my name and inflated the popularity counts. Thereby if someone wanted to know how many searches for "Michael Roebuck" were performed, they would also see variations including, "SEO Expert Michael Roebuck" , "Search Engine Optimization by Michael Roebuck" , "Apprentice Michael Roebuck" , "Bonanza A36 Pilot Michael Roebuck" and my personal favorite, "Peanut Butter and Jelly Michael Roebuck."

Since I inflated the keyword, "SEO Expert Michael Roebuck" these schmuck companies did a popularity search on "SEO" and my name was included as a variation. They then created a leader page on their web site for this keyword phrase. As you can see from the below screenshot of Google taken on May 8, 2006 at around 2:30pm, these optimized pages still exist. Note that I quit inflating the counts over a year ago.

Note also the company that optimized "Search Engine Optimization by Michael Roebuck." They were one of my first followers. I love looking at this guy Svends web Site. It has certainly grown over time and he certainly is a multi talented person. I think he does everything from SEO and Web Design to composing music and selling Real Estate. He even makes and sells ultra healthy cookies! I don't agree with how he performs Search Engine Optimization and especially how he spams his web site with keyword phrases, but that's my opinion. We all do things differently. Some do things right and some do things wrong.

I guess the moral of the story is much like changing my daughters diaper. If your willing to try to capitalize off my name or others, be prepared for what you may get. You could get a little pee or you could get a pile of crap!