Wednesday, October 26, 2005

Great Soul Food...in Seattle

The Wellington restaurant has some great soul food. I'm not an expert on the subject, but to me the overall quality of the food was the best I've ever had at a soul food restaurant. In addition, the service was extremely good, the atmosphere very pleasant, and the prices quite reasonable.

Our dinner party decided to order a number of entrees and sides so that we could get a taste of a number of different items. We got catfish, ox tail, macaroni and cheese, grits with cheese, okra, collared greens, and much more (sorry, I can't remember it all!)

Wednesday, July 27, 2005

PayPal for MLK Association

One of my upcoming projects for the Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Association of Santa Clara Valley is to enable the organization to accept electronic orders for memberships and tickets online. After taking a look at PayPal's website, it seems like it will be fairly simple and economically feasible to set up online payments using PayPal.

Tuesday, July 26, 2005

Blog Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Tip

Search engines like sites that are updated frequently. A blog that frequently has new posts will have a home page that changes frequently. But what about previous posts that are archived? They could stay the same forever, unless...

Sunday, July 24, 2005

Visiting San Jose

[UPDATE April 27, 2015: I've deleted my pages about visiting San Jose since they were so obsolete. The web site http://www.sanjose.org/ is a good place to start for any visitor planning a trip to San Jose.]

Back in the late 80's I had an idea to write a visitor's guide for San Jose, and distribute it at local book stores, hotels, etc. At the time, visitor information was only available to visitors from either booklets offered by local organizations promoting their interests or within a few pages of larger visitors guide books covering California or San Francisco. The information offered by local organizations were basically advertisements, and the few pages within the larger tourism books failed to cover what I thought a visitor might enjoy in San Jose.

Friday, July 22, 2005

Idea for Blogger Writer's Block

I was thinking, what subjects could I cover in the future for blog posts?

I've been active on a number of Yahoo! Groups for years, so then it dawned on me: reuse the content I've already created. So here's my plan for finding material for posts when I don't have any new ideas or don't have time to write any new idea:

Tuesday, July 19, 2005

Multiple Blogs and Customizing Blogger Templates

[UPDATE April 27, 2015: Blogger now support labels which helps to categorize posts within a single blog, but it is still very useful for me to maintain multiple blogs so that I may target each one for very different audiences. Within each blog, I am using labels to help further categorize the posts.]

Blogger doesn't have a feature to set up categories within a blog, but does allow for multiple blogs under one profile.

So I created two new blogs: MBA Notes from a Santa Clara University Alumni and LinkedIn Notes. After setting up the blogs, I realized that I like having multiple blogs better than just one blog with categories. I used basically the same template for each blog, but made subtle customized differences.

Monday, July 18, 2005

Blogs for Networking and SEO for Blogs

I am using blogs to share information about miscellaneous topics which interest me. It's convenient to have an easy way to post miscellaneous information without much work. So that people may find the information I share and benefit from it, I've implemented some basic search engine optimization (SEO) techniques which are applicable to all web sites.

Saturday, July 16, 2005

Search Engine Optimization: Part Two

Previously I shared some basic search engine optimization tips.

In addition to these tips, I've optimized the various sites I manage in other ways as well. I spend the most time thinking about how to optimize the site I manage at work, since the success of that site is what enables me to get paid. For the other sites, I implement optimization strategies when I have spare time.

For site engine optimization tips, I subscribe to email newsletters from the following sites:

Friday, July 15, 2005

Created Two New Blogs for LinkedIn and SCU MBA Posts

To organize my posts, I've created two new blogs:
  1. LinkedIn Notes
  2. MBA Notes from a Santa Clara University Alumni
Previous posts on this blog related to these two areas have been moved to these new blogs.
This blog will be a "catch-all" for all other topics.

Monday, July 11, 2005

Keith Ferrazzi and Networking

Here are two links regarding Keith Ferrazzi, who is perhaps the ultimate networker. While his style may be over-the-top for you, I think you'll find at least a few nuggets of his advice to be useful.

Friday, July 08, 2005

Now Listed on League of MBA Bloggers

As of today, I'm listed on the League of MBA Bloggers blog, listed under Santa Clara University. I'm the second entry listed for SCU, next to my friend the prolific blogger Kaleem Aziz. I don't think I'll ever generate nearly as many entries as Kaleem, but I plan to share MBA-related content on occasion.

Sunday, July 03, 2005

StatCounter Nice, But Javascript Code Corrupts Hyperlinks in Word

Over the last few days, I've inserted StatCounter code into the template for this blog, my personal site, and the site for the Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Association of Santa Clara Valley. While the code worked fine for this blog, I ran into a problem with the other two sites. My personal site and the MLK site have pages that are maintained using Microsoft Word.

Friday, July 01, 2005

Blog is now "Feed Enabled"

One of the purposes of my home page and this blog is to experiment with different ideas and technologies which may be useful for my job or my volunteer work. For example, I have been able to experiment with a number of ideas for search engine optimization on my personal home page, learning lessons which I applied to the web sites I manage for Sony and the Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Association of Santa Clara County.

After reading a lot of hype about RSS feeds, I thought I should take a shot at implementing a feed for my blog, just so that I know how it works. I don't expect many, if any, people to utilize my feed. However, the lessons learned from this exercise might prove to be useful for work and volunteer projects.

Saturday, June 25, 2005

Microsoft Word for Web Site Creation and Maintenance?

[UPDATE April 27, 2015: My personal web site is no longer created and maintained with Microsoft Word, and the web site I built for the Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Association of Santa Clara Valley, Inc. no longer exists online.]

Some have asked, how did I create my personal web site?

Friday, June 24, 2005

Media Exposure for Non-Profit Organizations in the San Francisco Bay Area

The following are notes that I took at the The Silicon Valley Radio and Television Public Affairs Directors and BAYPAD (Bay-Pad) Bi-annual Media Workshop on securing News and Public Affairs coverage, from 9:30 A-M to 12 Noon, on Wednesday, June 8th, in the Community Room of San Jose Martin Luther King Junior and San Jose State University Main Library.

Note that there were a number of media organizations represented; not all tips apply across all media organizations. Be sure to check with each media outlet for details.

Graduated from Santa Clara University's MBA Program

This post has moved to my new blog MBA Notes from a Santa Clara University Alumni.

Growing My Web Site Part 9: Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

Personal web pages are useful for information services professionals to experiment with ideas before trying them at work. I have learned a lot about search engine optimization (SEO) by trying to get search engines to put my site at the top of the results list when someone searches for the following:
  • "Richard Upton"
  • Richard Upton
  • "Rick Upton"
  • Rick Upton

Growing My Web Site Part 1: School Tips

Why did I create a personal web site? [UPDATE: April 27,2015: This blog now also serves as my personal web site.]

I originally set up my website just as place where I could park large files to transfer to coworkers, contractors, or schoolmates.

LinkedIn Yahoo! Groups

This post has moved to my new blog LinkedIn Notes.

Richard Upton's First Blog Entry

Richard Upton who?

The Richard Upton who lives in San Jose, CA and usually goes by the nickname Rick.

Rick, why a blog?

Well, what got me started was that I had to create one to post a comment on another person's blog. I haven't been hankering to create a blog. I figured that, being an information systems professional, I should give it a try just to know what it's all about from a content provider's perspective. I don't plan to do a whole lot with this blog. Basically, I plan for this blog to contain some comments about and links to the content on my main web. This blog should yield three benefits: