GardenNut

Design change. Wow!

2005-12-20T10:10:00.000-08:00

I started working on changing the look of the website. The front page was too busy. We needed to separate out the pieces a bit. And, we also needed to soften the look a bit.

I played around with different ideas. A menu on the left. A top banner. A sorta tree w/ branches of functions. Wasn't too pleased with either. Just when I thought it was all going to be the same, found a great css tab method, very clean, very simple. So, decided to try it out. It fit so well with the GardenNut design. So, now I have been working on updating the rest of the website.

It's going well. I should probably be done with large part of the update end of year. Then, it's marketing again.

Feck'ed up google interview

2005-12-15T13:04:00.000-08:00

I had been dancing around trying to get the interview date set up with google recruiters (they are soooooo slow). One of them kept telling me - 'We need to take our time, finding the right job is like a marriage'. Lady, if it was like a marriage, I'd have been married 8 times by now. No. Thank you very much. I love my husband.

Anyway, we finally settled on an interview date, and I showed up at Kirkland office at 10am sharp. I was shown around the office. Wow! The corridor was wider than the closet office I sat in at the previous contract.. Lots of machines, but it didn't quite have the energy of my closet office. You get food at the office, and anything else you might need. Perfect if you don't have, or don't want a life.

Anyway, got around to the interview, and the first person I meet is someone just out of college. So, it solidifies my impression that google just hires people out of college, and start wondering what the feck I'm doing here. Right off, she tells me how it's going to work. She will ask questions for the first 40 minutes, and then I'll have a chance to ask her anything I want in the remaining 5 minutes. Right! Brilliant time sharing. She starts asking some juvenille quiz question. I do the best I can. Most of these questions are really about figuring out what the interviewer wants you to say, not about figuring out the answer. I was in a particularly contrary mood, so I kept telling her what she didn't want to hear. She obviously knew exactly how she wanted it answered, and if I used a for loop instead of a while, I fucked up. What...ever.

My turn to ask questions, and I started asking everything about what technology I could work on, what group and so on. I couldn't get much answers. I have to say, I got pretty agitated - which I probably shouldn't have. After 2-3 weeks from the point of the first phone call to the interview, I was distinctly getting the impression that they were wasting my time. Their idea of interview was one way only. In their defense, they probably didn't realize that I was interviewing them too. I would need to know some facts before I could decide if I would consider joining them. If they aren't doing any work in my area of expertise, I wasn't gonna switch the expertise just to make them happy. Of course, I found out later, that's exactly what they expected.

Finally got to talk to a more senior engineer who had some clue about what they company did. Unfortunately, it wasn't technically what I would be interested in. I think they realized it too. I was sent off home after that first 1-1/2 hours - a distinct sign that the rest of the interviews were cancelled because the candidate(me) was not suitable.

My conclusion was that it is a waste of time to interview at google if you -
a. Have a life, or
b. Are passionate about particular technology or technologies, or
c. Are looking for an exciting start-up experience

It is a good place for you if -
a. You have worked for a large company before - ibm, amazon, microsoft etc.
b. Have a Masters or Ph.D. But, haven't worked in a software company before.
c. Are a smart generalist, without being particularly passionate about anything.

This is just my impressions, and I am pretty pissed off, so take everything I say with a grain of salt. Hope it saves both google and you some time if it isn't for you.

PS. I went for a google interview, and all I got out of it was a T-shirt.

Phase 2 - it's getting tougher

2005-12-10T21:03:00.000-08:00

If it wasn't getting more challenging, it would mean that it has flopped. That people are asking for more means that it is somewhat working.

Had an interesting chat with a guy who wanted to do a joint promo for gardennut and his plant recycling thing at the northwest flower and garden show. It is a great marketing opportunity if it turns out good. The show is in the spring.

The possibility of the show pretty much solidifies the need to do more upgrades. There is so many new ideas...people asking for different things that I haven't had the time to fix. It is time to seriously start applying the brain. My day-job contract is up soon too. So, I will have some more time to do the upgrade before the next spring season.

Gardennut is getting me excited again. Time to start delivering....

Just leave it alone

2005-11-14T18:54:00.000-08:00

I have pretty much left the site to it's own devices. I answer the rare questions, do small updates, and check it every once in a while

But, recently, I checked the links to gardennut. To my surprise, found that we had been listed in DMOZ. We had submitted for a listing at the beginning - more than 6 months ago. DMOZ is notoriously slow, but it is the most respected listing service. It is free, and manned by volunteers. I noticed that already a number of other websites have picked up the listing.

It is really difficult to keep at it, without any results for so long. The little results mean a lot.

One of the nursery owners' thanked us for providing the service. It was very motivating. I am again motivated to do some bigger additions to the site.

I care less and less if gardennut makes any money at all... ever. It is a good thing I do.

RSS - the news feed

2005-07-16T09:06:00.000-07:00

Found another site doing an RSS feed for their newsletter. Struck me that I could do that for gardennut plant listings. So, added an rss feed for recent plant listings to gardennut. It works very well for me. I can look at my yahoo page or live bookmarks in mozilla to see if anything has updated.
This was a fun one to do...and not at all difficult. Just changed the content type in JSP to 'text/xml' and wrote a JSP like any other to output the correct format.

Next one...a seller survey to find out what feature to do next.
...there is always a next one.

Google losing to MSN?

2005-07-09T09:44:00.000-07:00

I observed that more and more of the hits for GardenNut are from MSN now. Not so many from Google. So, my thinking is biased. For someone searching to buy specific plant, Google had so many more irrelevant answers.
Also, MSN now seems to be slowly indexing more than the home page of the site. It is definitely improving.

Why not try

2005-07-05T19:42:00.000-07:00

It's been a while since I posted here.

There is more than 100 ads now. I've done so many updates to GardenNut that it's hard to keep track. It looks like an impressive site now, and we are getting some referals on forums.

Had lunch with some other engineer friends today. They are all concerned about having reached the max of where they could as programmers. The salary curve has gone flat, and the only way to increase earnings is to start some business. So, how come so few people actually do that. Some of it is actual risk, some of it is perceived risk.

To make it work, the key is to manage risk. When I started, I thought things will be immediate success or failure. It was neither. Just slow starting up. Fortunately for me, I had contingency plan of contracting to support myself in the meantime built in. Without that, we would be in trouble. Hubby's balance in the face of my over-enthusiasm, while maddening at times, has been invaluable for me. We have found what works for us.

I hope and wish that my friends would find what works for them too. That's the key to success.

Costly focus group

2005-05-23T13:12:00.000-07:00

Went to visit one of the sellers on the site...a bamboo seller in Seattle. Had a great time. Learnt a lot about bamboos. Our intention was to find out what they thought of the website. We ended up buying some bamboo instead. Love it.

But, found out that backyard growers know all about their plants and don't always have an inventory. They are also not quite into internet advertising yet. They were going to spend god knows how much on seattle bamboo show for a day. I wonder if and how many customers it gets. But, to advertise on the web, they don't have a digital camera. I learnt a lot about the characteristics of sellers on the website. Need to talk to some small nurseries to find out more.

Also learnt that he put up the ad because of the flyer rather than the email. That was quite interesting. The flyers did do some good work. I think I will try sending more of them now that I know they aren't useless.

Update on Search Engines

2005-05-18T16:48:00.000-07:00

What makes the search engines come by...
It's definitely the content. We are beginning to get hits for search strings on yahoo and msn.

MSN - There was one hit for 'hen and chicks plant', 'where to buy heirloom plants' and 'where to buy aspen trees'
Yahoo - Hits 'where to sell plants?'(number 39), 'garden plants for sell' etc.
Google - Hits from google have dropped off. We are wayyyy in the dumps where google is concerned. oh well.

It is still good that we are getting some referals from search engines.

Progress

2005-05-17T18:23:00.000-07:00

It's slow progress, but glad there is progress. There is 30 ads on the site now, and 44 registered users. How come more users than ads?... some people haven't posted their ad, and some were just investigating how the site works, but decided not to post anything.

The forums are still the most effecting marketing. It is working slowly and steadily. Spreading the word is working too.

Also found that making it all free has positive effect. It's psychological perhaps. 5 free ads is not as effective as completely free. Can figure out what to sell later.

I am really close to having it all work for canadians. Very excited to see how that goes. Probably try and deploy it late tonight.

Marketing is tough

2005-05-09T19:40:00.000-07:00

I have been sending so many emails to request links, to request posts, and so on. My eyes hurt. So, this will be a short post.

Got the plant sale feature done. Did PRWeb press release with hubby. I have been putting so much effort into it...doesn't seem to be that much results so far. There is points when I wonder...what for.

It is tedious and tiring and slow and frustrating. But, it's mine. I must go on.

Wish it was all done yesterday

2005-05-03T13:15:00.000-07:00

I'm still working on the plant sale feature. It is taking a while. Lot more coding than I expected. Lot more screens too. I want to get version 1 out soon. Hubby wants to use it. The gardening season is getting busy. Wish it was all done yesterday.

There is more to do after that one. Bug Fixes. Canadian Zip codes etc.

Things are busier at work. Doing a presentation soon on EJB 3.0. See if they'll be interested in trying out something new, or not. If not, I have to get out and do some other cutting edge work. I am dying a slow death (from boredom) here. An interview tomorrow looks promising.

All this going on...it isn't easy...but it's fun.

Enjoying the sun

2005-05-01T18:23:00.000-07:00

It was a gorgeous seattle day out today. So, even though there was tons to do on the website, I skipped out.

Hubby, of course, had gone overboard and bought many many flower seeds. We planted most of them today. Can't wait for them to get started. It will be beautiful. Also planted more lavendar, and cucumber and squash. Oh, and more peppers. Hubby's still out planting sunflowers. We'll be admiring those the whole summer.

Look and feel

2005-05-01T08:55:00.000-07:00

I was chatting with my sister and she mentioned that the size of all the text looked really large in IE. I had my settings set to smallest in IE. I finally realized that most people have it set to medium. It was really large with medium settings. The problem was that it was also just the right size on firefox. I want to support both the browsers from the beginning. So, I started trying to figure out what sizes would work best.

Turns out the x-small, small, medium, large, x-large, xx-large font-sizing that I was using is drastically inconsistent amongst browsers. So, I started looking for what's less inconsistent. Looks like there is no perfect solution - Forum discussion

So, I had a few options

Use em sizing
Use fixed sizing

Fixed sizing meant people would not be able to increase text size. Somehow that seemed a worse idea than having different sizing in different browsers. So, I decided on em sizing.

I found that about .9em with georgia font is still pretty large but is ok on IE. It works well on firefox too. Will wait and see if I need to make it smaller for IE.

If this doesn't work, the only option will be to go to separate stylesheets for separate browsers.

Life goes on

2005-04-28T13:16:00.000-07:00

I haven't written anything for a while. Was trying to figure out what to do next after the failure of the offline marketing.

In the meantime, things got busy at work. Now they are slow again.

Thought maybe we needed more features on the site to attract nurseries. So, we put in a new feature. The nursery can get it's own nursery page. Put information about the nursery and then link it to all the plants it has. Noone has setup a nursery yet. That's not surprising, because it's only been 2 days since it launched.

Also got some really good response from a visitor to the site. So, that's 4 people that really liked the site and took the effort to write some feedback. Not bad so far. She really liked the site, but was sad there was no posts from new jersey area on it. She also mentioned that local garden clubs would find the site useful.

So, from nurseries to garden clubs...the next new idea is let people organize plant sales. Some one can setup the plant sales, then invite other people to join the sale. It is a community building idea. There are people who are natural organizers and people who are natural participants. Works for both. Hopefully. I'm keeping my finger's crossed.

Back to coding. I worked all morning on trying to get just the right curvature on a div element background without using images. It is a tiny piece of the user interface. But, it felt good to solve the problem.

That's where I get my high. From solving problems.

Total failure

2005-04-19T09:33:00.000-07:00

It's more than a week now since the flyer sent to nurseries to post their plants on GardenNut. There was no new registrations last week. Looks like it was a complete failure.

The online marketing seems to work much better for websites. Hubby's newsgroup posts got more hits. Also get regular hits from reciprocal links. Should probably do more of those.

Got hits from Canada. Even a request to have the site work for Canadians. We are looking for a zipcode database for Canada. Putting more features in. A 'Contact me' link next to the contact information for the seller. 'All plants by this nursery' link, and so on.

In the meantime also, looking at a new startup, somewhere I can go and build the whole system from start to end. Will see how that goes...

A shot in the dark

2005-04-11T12:33:00.000-07:00

So far, we have been working on SEO (Search Engine Optimization) techniques that are written about in many technical books. Now, we are beginning to venture into the offline world of marketing. Have no idea where to start or what to do.

The first goal is to get content on the site. So, this weekend we prepared a little flyer and posted it to 75 nurseries around seattle, inviting them to post ads on GardenNut.Took us hours to write all the addresses and return addresses. This is a pilot. We have no idea if it will be successful. Snail mail is slow. So we won't know about the impact for another week.

My nails are going to get really short in the meantime.

Where have all the techies gone

2005-04-10T09:56:00.000-07:00

I mean the software techies. The ones that love and enjoy software for software's sake. They live and breath technology. Where did they go?

I went back to work for unnamed large company. I had worked there before. Had become disgusted with the politics and left. This time there is new management. Still, the same politics.

I am back to watching all the remaining engineers position themselves for maximum political power. One engineer left to go where he would have more power, even though the technology was the worst. The manager's and even the engineers now decide what technology to use based on how that would position them politically rather than what would work best. I told a friend that was the wrong way of doing things, and he asked me what world I live in.

I don't know why I hang on the ideal. I wish it were more about work, fun, technology, software and even marketing. Just, not about power.

That ideal is my motivation for GardenNut.

Browser Quirks

2005-04-07T13:43:00.000-07:00

The search engine quirks were interesting. The browser quirks are just irritating.

Took all of hubby's ideas and built the new home page for GardenNut. Worked great. Tested it. So, went ahead and deployed it. That's when the problems started. The home page would not show up on IE. It stopped halfway. Worked fine on Firefox.

First we thought it was a server problem. Started looking at issues w.r.t. apache mod_jk forwarding to tomcat. Then, thought maybe it had something to do with sessions. Still nothing.

Finally clicked, maybe it's client only. After much trying, turns out that there was two elements that were trying to get focus on load. Fixed that and all was good.

Conclusion - The technology dictates whether a good idea will materialize or not.

Search Engine(s) Quirks

2005-04-04T17:24:00.000-07:00

I have been doing some analyses based on combined apache log. Found some very interesting things about search engines.

Yahoo and MSN have only indexed the home page. I think they both use Inktomi search engine technology. Yahoo and MSN were the first ones to index GardenNut, and they come by regularly. But, every time they index only the home page.
Ask Jeeves has been indexing more than the home page. It seems to do a page or two every day. It is a different page every time. It did not index any links with parameters in them.
Google took a while to get started. First time, it indexed only the home page. Next day, it indexed home page and pages pointed to by home pages. For a day, it indexed a page every 15 minutes or so. It was the only one that indexed links with parameters in them (i.e. the actual ads). Since then, though, it hasn't attempted to re-index more than the home page.

When I check search engine rankings,

Yahoo has us ranked very well for the keywords - GardenNut, Buy Sell Garden Plants, Buy Sell Plants.
MSN - We are ranked well for the keyword - GardenNut. But no sign of us for Buy Sell Garden Plants.
Ask Jeeves - 2nd page for keyword GardenNut. No such luck for Buy Sell Garden Plants.
Google has us ranked well for the keywords - GardenNut, Taxus Capitata (from one of the ads). We are ranked for Buy Sell Garden Plants, but very poorly.

Only google search has resulted in any hits to www.gardennut.com - from people searching for Taxus Capitata. The remaining search engines haven't had an impact.

Even though it is slow at coming around, google indexed the most pages with relevant content. There is a reason why people are able to find relevant stuff on google.

Relaxation today

2005-04-03T18:52:00.000-07:00

Each of us working on a full time job, plus our own website - doesn't leave much time for relaxation. Yesterday we did a major release and upgrade. So, today, we couldn't motivate ourselves to do more. If we force ourselves, the website will become too much like work rather than fun. So, we decided to focus on what it's all about in the first place - Gardening.

It rained in the morning. When it stopped, the air smelt of earth and pine. It felt good just to breathe it. I think perhaps me and hubby can't really sit still. So, we started our vegetable patch. Weeded the herb garden. Planted some new basil. Planted what we think are eggplant and cantaloupe. We'll find out.

Now it's time to take the relaxation a step further, and warm up in the sauna. Of course, GardenNut never stops. It's not just a business. It's a way of life. So, I'll be reading one of the marketing advice books or technical manuals in the sauna.

Site's down!

2005-04-03T00:37:00.000-08:00

First, had an electric surge due to a storm in seattle. That didn't effect the computers, but knocked out the routers. Network was down. Fortunately, I was at home, saw the lights flicker and checked the site. Rebooted the routers and all was well. For the future, we invested in a $59.99 surge protector with some battery backup.

Then, jboss crapped out. We think it was because it ran out of memory. We might need to do some performance tests, and also increase the memory available to the jboss process.

Changing the power source, and updating memory settings, required that the site goes down. So, at midnight, we setup the site to go to a different machine with an information page telling the users that the site was down for maintenance. Then, completed all the updates. Thankfully took only about 15 minutes to do the updates.

Phew! GardenNut is up and running again. Time for us to sleep.

Technology meets Marketing

2005-03-30T18:30:00.000-08:00

In a way, the whole blog is about technology and marketing.

We turned on referer logs on apache yesterday. That was the technology part of it. It provided useful information. Let's us know if any of our marketing efforts are any use at all. Turns out they are. So far, mostly people got refered from sites we had placed links on - gardenweb, gardening forums, newsgroups. It all seems to be some use. There was one link we didn't place - backyard growers forum. There were referals from there.

More good news. There is 15 registered users now. Also, one of the new user's sent some nice feedback saying how much he liked the site. Hits were up today too.

I still want to keep improving the site based on hubby's suggestions. It is easy to get too caught up in analysing the logs. The marketing, and fixes must both happen at the same time.

Its a start

2005-03-29T19:00:00.000-08:00

Not all is bad. It may have seemed that way yesterday. But, today is another day. Google just indexed more pages on the site. Don't know what result it will have, but the pages are indexed. Yahoo! No, I don't mean the search engine. I'm just happy.

I wonder if the recent bad weather has something to do with the drop in hits. Gardenning season hasn't really started. Wouldn't know that watching the hubby though. Maybe it's just me. I'm not good enough. My site's not good enough. Boo hoo hoo.

I'm a do-er. I may not understand what I should do. But, I know what I can do. So, I took hubby's suggestions from last weekend and re-coded portions of the site. That's what I'm good at after all. Skipped out on work to work on GardenNut. I feel better now.

That's what it's like. A Roller coaster.

Zero Budget Marketing

2005-03-28T17:55:00.000-08:00

We are hard-core techies. Before launching GardenNut, I thought all the work is in the technology...and we can handle that. I've disliked most of the marketing or manager types that I have worked with. They seem a bit cheesy and never seem to know what they are doing, unlike developers.

I am learning new respect for marketing the hard way... by trying it out. It is a nail biting experience. Did the search engine index the pages, what do I need to do, will we be found, so on. Of course, we have no money, so no marketing budget. So, how do we go about being found?

One of the techniques suggested is to swap links with other websites. Well, that seemed like a good plan in any case. People will come to know about us. Not so easy. Out of 50 requests I sent, probably got 5 responses. Still, that's not bad. We'll take 10% right now.

Then the rest are sites that charge for links from them. They are free if we were a non-profit. We have no profit. Does that qualify? Not really. Oh, well.

What about forums? Can we let people know, hey check out this new cool site. Some yes, but mostly no. The moderators deleted anything that may be close to advertising.

Really hope this blog is indexed. That's one other well earned link. (rueful smile here, how desperate can we get)

What about froogle. Can we post our ads on froogle to get visibility. Well, GardenNut is a trade site where people can look for trades in their neighborhood. But, froogle wants shipping all over US. The whole point of starting GardenNut was because shipping plants is tough. Not only do they not arrive in a good condition. The plants may not be suited for the zone. So, froogle is out.

My conclusion for the day is that marketing never seems to know what they are doing, 'cos they don't. I don't either.

What's this blog about

2005-03-28T17:37:00.000-08:00

Me and hubby started GardenNut website last week. This blog is just about keeping track of the roller coaster ride, long as it lasts.

Asis typical of developers, we thought the work was over once the bulk of coding was done. We are just discovering that is just the beginning. I haven't done a blog before, so, I am guessing this is just write whatever I feel like. Whoever wants to can see it. So, here it is from the beginning...