I went to London on a business trip, and luckily had a few hours to walk around with my camera. I took lots of pictures (no surprise there), and created a Google Maps/Flickr mashup, so anyone could follow my path and see what I saw.

At the end, when I reached Buckingham Palace it started to snow. Really made for an interesting and unique view of the Palace.

I hope you enjoy the tour as much as I did!

Walking Tour of London

Post from: Dan Perry

Walking Tour of London

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One gate closes; another gate opens…

I resigned from my SEO Manager position at Cars.com, and have accepted a position with Turner Broadcasting. The Title of the position is “Director – Search Engine Optimization, Strategic Audience Solutions“. So exciting!

I’ll be working with Topher and supporting his SEO efforts at CNN, as well as supporting SEO on the other Turner web properties, such as:

CNN Money
NASCAR
NBA
TNT
TBS
PGA (Not that I love golf or anything!)
PGA Tour (Ditto!)
Cartoon Network (and the International versions)
Adult Swim (Venture Brothers – Yay!)

For an in-house SEO guy, this is as good as it gets. I’m excited, scared, anxious… Running through lots of emotions. The most exciting opportunity of my career!

So I’ve started a list of all the things I’ll have to assess (internal training, current initiatives, development calendars, analytics, etc.) For those of you doing in-house SEO…

What one piece of advice would you offer concerning my new position?

Post from: Dan Perry

Moving On…

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I’ve been a fan of buying food in bulk for a long time (we always had an extra freezer growing up.) Also, with both my wife and I working, there are many nights where neither of us want to cook dinner. I’m also cheap frugal enough to try and refrain from eating out too often. Because of all those reasons, here’s how I spent a single Saturday afternoon making 23 dinners for two.

We have 5 staple dinners that we both regularly enjoy: Spaghetti Pie, Bowtie Pasta, Tacos, Turkey Burritos and Sloppy Joes. My goal was to make double (or triple) batches of all 5. I’ll eventually post recipes, but this post is specifically about the process rather than the individual meals. Here’s what I had to start with:

And this is the key to my success:

If you’ve never used a Foodsaver, you are missing out. It sucks all the air out of the bag before it seals it, meaning a pound of burger can easily last a year or more (if needed), without losing any of its flavor. The same goes for prepared meals. The only food that I’ve found that doesn’t work with the Foodsaver are potatoes, because of their chemical composition. As long as the dish doesn’t contain any potatoes, give it a shot!

The above 5 meals really break down into two types. The first type can be broken down into individual “pounds” of each (Tacos, Turkey Burritos and Sloppy Joes).  I make up batches of these, and then freeze them in 1 pound bags, so when we thaw them out, both of us will have it for dinner. All you need to do here is make the meal, divide it up into pound bags, flatten it out, seal and freeze. There are two reasons you want to flatten it out; the first is so it thaws quicker, and the second is for storing. Here’s a picture of the inside of my freezer; see how nice these stack?

The other type of meals are those that are individual servings (Spaghetti Pie and Bowtie Pasta.) These are sealed and frozen into individual servings, so if I want Spaghetti Pie and she wants Bowtie, it’s not a problem. The trick here is to line a number of your everyday bowls with plastic wrap, then put a single serving of the meal into the bowl, like so:

Then, stick the bowls in the freezer for an hour or so, until it starts to freeze in the shape of the bowl. Then, when you seal it, it will (roughly) retain the shape of the bowl.

Then, when the time comes to eat one of these single servings, when you cut open the bag, it already fits into a bowl!

So after about 5-6 hours, I turned a pile or groceries into this:

I ended up with 3 bags of Turkey Burritos (6 servings), 4 bags of Sloppy Joe’s (8 servings), 3 bags of Tacos (6 servings), 16 bags of Spaghetti Pie and 10 bags of Bowtie Pasta (plus we had a serving for dinner that night). All in all, that totals 46 servings that I’ll be placing in the freezer, or 23 dinners for the both of us. Considering we cook and dine out occasionally, this should easily last us 6-8 weeks of dinners, all for 5-6 hours of work. Easily the best use of my time, hands down.

Few additional thoughts:

1. This is extremely helpful for controlling portion size. If you enjoy making your favorite dish, and always pig out and say “Ugh; I ate too much” afterwards, consider the Foodsaver. You decide how big to make the servings; very helpful for controlling caloric intake.

2. You’ll need big pans, especially a very large non-stick one that can hold 2-3 pounds of burger at once. You should be able to find one for a decent price at any Target, Wal-Mart, etc. Just watch the sales.

3. If you’re making multiple pasta meals, always keep a large pot of boiling water on the stove. It can sit in the back corner for as long as you need. Having to wait for water to boil just plain sucks, and there’s no reason to.

4. I started doing this when I was single, and it’s as good. It will just last that much longer, which isn’t necessarily a bad thing!

5. You will need room to store this stuff. We have a stand-alone freezer in the garage, which makes it a lot easier. If you only have a freezer on your fridge, keep that in mind before getting carried away.

6. This took about 6 hours start to finish. The last hour was waiting for the bowls of Bowtie to set in the freezer, so it really doesn’t count, but still. I’d suggest going shopping the night before for all of this stuff, then eating out, and having a meal that doesn’t generate leftovers. You’ll be making your favorite meals the next day, so the leftovers may just go to waste.

7. Buy the Foodsaver rolls instead of the precut bags, and make your own bags. The precut bags are around $10 for 22 at Target (about $0.45/bag.) A box of 6 rolls at Sam’s Club is $40. I made 25 bags out of one roll, meaning it should equal 150 bags for $40 (about $0.27/bag.) I used a total of 36 bags on this day, meaning I saved about $6.50 on bags alone. It all adds up, right?

That’s it; hope you enjoyed it, and it inspires you to give it a shot.

Anyone else do this? Any input on optimizing the process?

If you like this post you might enjoy following me on Twitter: twitter.com/danperry

Post from: Dan Perry

My Foodsaver and Why I Love It

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Yahoo has set the SearchMonkey application for Facebook as default. This is what my Facebook profile looks like in Yahoo now.

Don’t act like you’re not impressed. 

If you like this post you might enjoy following me on Twitter: twitter.com/danperry

Post from: Dan Perry

Yahoo and the Facebook Searchmonkey App

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3. The Masters iPhone App

I have to admit that I’m hooked on my iPhone. A few months ago, I heard someone say that it “changed their life”. Not sure if I’m at that stage, but I am pretty close. It has added a layer to my life that I never thought a phone could, so for that I guess it has changed my life.

After going through a few dozen (free) applications and deciding on what to put on the homepage (or first homepage, if you know what I mean), I thought it worth sharing. Maybe you’ll see some of your first page Apps, and maybe you can comment on some that I should be considering. Keep in mind that all of the apps I’m currently using are free.

Here’s my homepage.

Since I use my right hand for the most part, all of my favorite apps are within reach of my right thumb. Let’s go through a couple of my favorites.

Purr

The main reason this is on my homepage is because it’s my cat. A friend built the iPhone App, and as he was searching for fat cats, and mine kept coming up (image SEO at work!) Anyway, he decided to use it as the default image for this program. Basically, when you rub his belly he purrs, and the iPhone vibrates. Not the most useful app, but what can I say, it’s Moe!

PixelPipe

This is a relatively new app, but it has tremendous potential. You can take a picture with your iPhone, and automatically have it uploaded to multiple locations. The same goes for video. Last time I looked, PixelPipe supported over 60 different social media sites. I am currently using 11, as you can see. If you’re playing in the social space, it is worth your time to check this app out.

What’s On?

This is a TV Guide, plain and simple. I don’t have a Tivo, nor do I have digital cable; just the bare bones cable here, so this is very valuable when riding the train home at night, and deciding whether to watch TV or actually accomplish something.

vLingo

vLingo allows you to speak into your iPhone, but it goes so much farther than that. I can update my Twitter or Facebook account with vLingo (never having to type, only speaking into it), do a web search, say someone’s name and call them, find directions, etc. The voice recognition isn’t perfect, but it is awfully good for a free App.

VoiceNotes

Allows you to quickly (the key word here) record a note. I love this app so much. I’m constantly thinking of things I need to remember, and before was a huge fan of generating lists. Now I just speak them into VoiceNotes and go through the list; it couldn’t be simpler. There’s either a big green button that reads “Record” or a big red one (as above) that reads “Stop”.

LoseIt

OK, so I’m a New Year’s Resolution sucker, but I do need to lose weight and this app is great for that. Basically, it forces me to keep track of what I eat and how much I exercise, and it shows me daily and weekly caloric information. Is it the best app I’ve ever seen for weight loss? Maybe not but for free, it is easily the best I’ve seen. The simple act of keeping track of what I’m eating actually forces me to exercise more and eat less, and that’s the one-two punch of weight loss, right?

TwitterFon

This App is so important to me that it’s in the coveted bottom right corner of my iPhone (the easiest app to reach). I’ve tried Twitterific, and another Twitter iPhone app, but nothing comes close. Ridiculously easy to retweet, easy to find who you’re following, wonderful interface, etc. This app is my most used and receives my highest recommendation.

So, what apps am I missing from my homepage? Looking forward to your thoughts.

If you like this post you might enjoy following me on Twitter: twitter.com/danperry

Post from: Dan Perry

My Favorite iPhone Apps

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As I was riding into work today, I was trying to figure out why mobile hasn’t caught on in the US. It seems at the beginning of every year we hear the same old line: “This will be the year for mobile”, but it never really seems to happen. Why not? It just doesn’t make sense to me.

I think part of the reason (for me specifically) is because I’ve created an awesome mobile environment for myself, and thought it worth sharing, in the hopes of moving the mobile ball forward.

Without further adieu, here’s a look at my main mobile homepage(s), with some tips to help you build your own.

This is the main page for my mobile phone. I built it in Dreamweaver. It’s a very basic, flat HTML page with a little CSS. I originally had everything on one page, but realized it was more efficient to have the items I truly use on a regular basis on the homepage, and unload everything else on other pages, to aid in faster load times. For reference, this page is only 3k in size.

The other good thing about this is that I don’t have to go online to retrieve my homepage. I keep a copy on the memory card, so when I open the browser on my mobile phone, it loads this page very quickly, instead of trying to go online to load the default mobile homepage of my carrier. The time saved by doing this trumps the time it took to build it, hands down.

As you can see, there’s a lot of stuff on this main page. On a normal commute, I’ll check Twitter, MSNBC, BBC, and 3-4 pages on the Wall Street Journal.

Also, remember that all links on my mobile pages are to the mobile versions of the site. If they don’t have a mobile version, it isn’t going on this page.

At the bottom of the page, I have a link to the train schedule and to Page 2.

I copied the schedule for my train line into a simple table, and color-coded the lines for easier readability. If I scroll down, I can also see the weekend schedules. This comes in really handy when I stay in the city for dinner, or when attending a Cubs game on a weekend.

On Page 2, I have a collection of mobile links that I check from time to time. Nothing out of the ordinary here; remember that they are all to the mobile versions of the applicable site.

At the bottom of Page 2, I have search boxes for Google and Yahoo. I originally had these on the homepage, but they took too long to render and load, so they got demoted to page 2. Also, I really don’t search that much; almost everything I need is available via a link.

Finally, for those not aware, when searching Google from a mobile phone, if the result is a mobile site, they add a small image of a phone next to the listing, so you know it’s going to be easy to view, and not crash your phone, causing a reboot. This little touch is awesome; it really helps out in the mobile environment.

It didn’t take very long to generate these pages, but the value they add is immeasurable. Being able to find the current movies with two clicks, current weather is one click, PGA Leader board is one click; easily worth the effort, and I suggest everyone with a mobile phone follow my lead. It really increases the value of the phone.

If anyone would like a copy of the HTML, just let me know via email or Twitter. Thanks for reading, and I hope it motivates you to personalize your mobile start page.

If you like this post you might enjoy following me on Twitter: twitter.com/danperry

Post from: Dan Perry

My Mobile Phone Set-up, and Why You Should Personalize Yours

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