Michael Janairo

Web Analytics

Author: Michael Janairo

  • Twitter lessons from the NYTimes

    The New York Times twitterers share some of their lessons of 2013 on the Nieman Labs:

    During 2013, we began consistently scheduling multiple runs of tweets highlighting some of our best enterprise material, especially during weekend hours and overnight, when @nytimes is mostly automated. It goes without saying that if you tweet more, you’ll get more traffic overall. But what we found when we scheduled tweets on Saturday and Sunday was that the average click per tweet grew substantially.

    One thing that this means is that Twitter users who follow all sorts of media accounts (and not just the national media), can expect to see tweets repeated.

  • Thank you, Internet, for today’s victory

    The problem: Remote-car starter appears nonfunctional after having my dead battery replaced

    The solution: The remote-car starter company’s FAQ

    Time on task: 10 minutes to look things up on the Internet; less than a minute to implement

    Lesson: This remains one of the best gifts from my wife

  • Review: The Cut

    The Cut
    The Cut by George Pelecanos
    My rating: 2 of 5 stars

    I’ve enjoyed other George Pelecanos’ books, especially The Turnaround, much better than this. The character Spero Lucas just seems too pretty/macho/lucky/wise/serious to feel real or to be seriously.

    View all my reviews

  • Review: Oil and Honey: The Education of an Unlikely Activist

    Oil and Honey: The Education of an Unlikely Activist
    Oil and Honey: The Education of an Unlikely Activist by Bill McKibben
    My rating: 4 of 5 stars

    Bill McKibben opens up about his mixed feelings of turning from writer about the environment to activist. A heartfelt and compelling read.

    View all my reviews

  • Top blog-comment spam on the Arts Talk blog

    One of the blogs I help run is the Times Union’s Arts Talk blog, which gets a lot of blog-comment spam. The spam is a product of people trying to scam Google. Included with the comment is often a URL that links to some awful website, so if the comment is approved, then it appears a different web entity is linking to the awful website, thus raising its Google profile.

    The thing is, the blog-comment spam is just so nice and positive and reassuring — though it often has nothing to do with the content of the post to which it is allegedly commenting on. I never approve these comments, but I like sharing them. Here’s the best comment of the week:

    “I’m impressed, I have to say. Really rarely do I encounter a weblog that’s both educative and entertaining, and let me inform you, you may have hit the nail on the head. Your thought is outstanding; the difficulty is something that not enough individuals are speaking intelligently about. I’m very happy that I stumbled throughout this in my seek for one thing relating to this.”

  • Photos: Chichen Itza December 2012

    Photos: Chichen Itza December 2012

    This slideshow requires JavaScript.

    Here’s a link to a story I wrote about visiting Chichen Itza just a few days before what others were calling the Mayan Apocolypse.

  • Chilling with Brian Eno’s Music for Airports 1/1

    Best chill-out song ever. Enjouy

  • The Marines test a robotic mule

  • The love letters of Ms. Leyte ’27 and a young lieutenant

    The love letters of Ms. Leyte ’27 and a young lieutenant

    Image

    Letters relate another time, other lives

    Originally Published in the Albany Times Union, December 11, 2005

    Janairo —

    Here is a prayer book given to me four years ago today by a good friend of the family. Use it, and I know it will do you a lot of good. Will you make it your New Year’s resolution to attend Mass regularly every Sunday? Thank you ever so much.

    AZR.

    Tuesday, December 30, 1930.

    This note and others like it are stuffed inside a greenish-gold box that says “La Jade” and “Paris” over an image of birds in flight. It doesn’t say that it contains the love letters of Lt. Maximiano Saqui Janairo and Amelia Zialcita Romualdez, as they were known in 1930.

    I knew them decades later as Lolo and Lola , the Filipino nicknames for grandfather and grandmother, when they lived far from their homeland in Alexandria, Va. Being of Irish-American-Philippine descent, I had always been curious about my Asian heritage, even though (or perhaps because) my Lolo and Lola had seemed so distant, so regal, so “old world.” (more…)