For a long time, cron jobs have been a mystery to me. They seemed much too complicated and I didn't understand them. Whenever I needed to create one with our old host, they had a handy gui-based cron job creator. Still not the most intuitive thing I've ever used, but it got the job done. Now that we've switched over to Rails Machine for our hosting, there is no concept of a gui cron wizard for me to rely on anymore. It was time I put on my big-boy pants and learned to write a cron job like the adults do.

Like most things that intimidate me, I found that there wasn't much to it when I actually dove in and starting researching the topic. Now, I consider myself to be, at the least, competent at creating new cron jobs. Below is a description of the formatting of cron jobs as well as a few examples. I'm keeping this post mostly as a reference for myself, but if it can help anyone else then that's great.

Explanation of how a cron job is formatted

 *   *   *   *   *  some command or group of commands
(1)(2)(3)(4)(5)

(1) minute (00-59)
(2) hour (in 24-hour format of course, 0-23)
(3) day (1-31)
(4) month (1-12)
(5) day of week (0-7 where Sunday is 0 AND 7)

Examples

We want to clear the log files at 2am every Sunday morning.

00  2  *  *  0  cd /var/www/apps/plexus/current; rake log:clear

We want to run some rake task every weekday at noon.

00  12  *  *  1-5  cd /var/www/apps/plexus/current; rake some_task

Let's say we only want to run a script on the 1st and 15th of the month at midnight, and only in the month of June

00  0  1,15  6  *  /path/to/script

If you specify both a month day AND a weekday, then the cron will treat it as cumulative and run on both days. The following script will be executed every Saturday and Sunday at 12:00pm, but will also be run on the 10th of each month.

00  12  10  *  0,6  /path/to/script

Not so bad, is it?

The second season of Deserving Design is premiering tonight, July 2nd at 9 PM EST on HGTV. The series producer is my “favorite” sister-in-law, Alyssa Kaufman Kopp, she and her crew have been working hard to make this season better yet. Tune in and watch some terrific people get great new spaces designed by Atlanta’s own Vern Yip.

Get to Know Vern and His Style

Designer Vern Yip hosts a new feel-good design show that gives a break to the people who really need it the most. Deserving Design is uplifting and empathetic and showcases Vern's remarkable talent and warm sense of humor. In each half-hour episode, he will actually make over two rooms, developing a design plan that will bring balance to home, family and life. Homeowners help plan one room's makeover — the other room is a total surprise!

One room at a time, Vern Yip is designing his way across America, having knocked down walls and made over countless homes and restaurants during his four seasons on two design television shows as well as through his private practice. He is now spreading the word on digital home makeovers through AOL and promoting the designs of Stainmaster carpet, Moen faucets and Procter & Gamble's Bella & Birch Division and the integration of high-end electronics through Best Buy's new Magnolia store concept. His most recent projects include his return as a judge on the exciting second season of HGTV Design Star, in which he'll help discover America's next great design talent. In addition, he stars in his own HGTV show, Deserving Design. Also in the works is his new home product line with a nationally well-known company. Whatever he does, his award-winning work has a distinct flair that reflects his expertise as both an architectural and interior designer.

Yip runs his own design company in Atlanta, Vern Yip Designs and www.vernyip.com, where design tips are dispensed and top-quality products, designed by Vern with consumer value in mind, can be purchased. With a bachelor of arts in economics and a bachelor of science in chemistry from The University of Virginia and an M.B.A. and master of architecture from The Georgia Institute of Technology, he has used his varied educational background to build a distinguished business. His creations and room transformations range in budget from the notoriously frugal showcased on television to eight-figure projects for high-end clients nationwide, including special event design for one of 2006's highest-profile Oscar parties. Regardless of the budget, his design calling card is his attention to detail married with precise, clean-lined interiors balanced with a sense of warmth. Many elements of his creations and eclectic style demonstrate an influence from childhood travels throughout Asia, Latin America and Europe. Often with his designs, less is more and something in the room always "pops" because of its graphic nature.

Having characterized himself as the classic overachiever, Yip and his projects have amassed an impressive list of design awards including the 2003 Distinguished Southerner Award, Southern Living magazine; 2000 Southeast Designer of the Year; Fusebox Restaurant, Atlanta, 1999 Best New Restaurant; and DeuxPlex Bistro and Night Club, Atlanta, 1999 Best New Night Club. In addition, he has been prominently featured in various publications such as Entertainment Weekly, The New York Times and USA Today. He is frequently seen on television shows such as Today, The Early Show, Oprah, CNN and Live! With Regis and Kelly.

For more information, visit Web site

Last Wednesday I attended an Atlanta Interactive Marketing Association meeting entitled-- Search Marketing: Finding the Value Beyond the Online Click to Conversion. Moderating the talk was John Cattarulla Director, Strategic Accounts, Yahoo! The panelists included:

Ron Belanger
VP of Agency Development, Yahoo!

Roku Coryne
Senior Metrics Consultant, Google

Jason Fisher
Group Director, 360i

Ron Belanger from Yahoo! began by explaining that when employing search marketing we want to put products in the path of search behavior.

He did a great job of looking at Search in an nontraditional way. I was prepared to hear a little more about search engine optimization tips, but he talked more about using Search in a social media/public relations sort of way. I think this is a good indicator that the delineation of business, marketing, advertising and public relations is blurring more every day.

Belanger discussed the need for organizations providing its customers' support online. He calls this a post-purchase opportunity to maintain a relationship with the customer. When your customer has a question about your product they will likely turn to the Internet to research the answer. You want your organization to be first with the answer. What a great way to convey your organization's messages first and upfront.

He also discusses a case study from Hellmann's Mayonnaise. They partnered with Yahoo! and used search in a campaign to change the perception of mayo. They wanted to banish the bad rap of mayonnaise (particularly Hellmann's) and educate their public that mayo is in fact a "real food" with "real ingredients." When one searches "real food" in Yahoo! Hellmann's Yahoo Real Food Group appears at the top of the search results (paid and unpaid). It is a social network that allows users to trade recipes, discuss health topics, and view videos. I can't remember the exact numbers, but overall it was a very successful campaign.

Raku Coryne's presentation was very entertaining! She attributed many of her ideas to Avinash Kaushik, and likened bounce rate to scent. Scent in the way a bloodhound finds its prey. If a bounce rate is high it has no scent. It doesn't have the stickiness factor to retain visitors, and then you have a problem.

She also said Kaushik likes to compare Web analytics to Angelina Jolie. "Web Analytics is like Angelina Jolie: It’s sexy, it kicks butt, and is a goodwill ambassador!"

Coryne said that she liked to compare Web analytics to Oprah. She said bounce rate is like Oprah because it can tell a good story.

She also explained the importance of two numbers: 4 and 25.

4 words= average number of words in a search engine query
25% of search in Google each day have never been searched before

From this she explained Chris Anderson's Long Tail.

She also said Web analytics were useful in eliminating the HIPPO. The Highest Paid Person's Opinion. She said the HIPPO often makes decisions based on his/her opinion, and that Web analytics eliminated this. One cannot argue with the information and statistics gathered from Web analytics. If the HIPPO likes one landing page, but users liked the other (tracked with Web analytics) the right answer is obviously the landing page that actually worked.

I found it very useful to think about search in a creative way. You must have a general idea for how it works if you are using it in a campaign, but it has many applications other than just "being number one." I also like how Coryne presented metrics as non-intimidating. It really helps to know that the simplest metrics can be the most telling and actionable.

For more information and pictures, check out Dan Greenfield's post about the meeting. I came upon it after doing a search on the meeting's topic-- how appropriate.

Google announced yesterday that is has now developed an algorithm for reading content within Flash Web files. Utilizing Adobe's Flash Player technology, textual content such as Flash menus, buttons and banners, to self-contained Flash Web sites can now be read and indexed by the search engine.

Google previously warned against Flash only sites because search engines were exclusively text-based and couldn't read content contained in Flash files. Google's warning included:

"This means that in order to be crawled and indexed, your content needs to be in text format. This doesn't mean that you can't include images, Flash files, videos, and other rich media content on your site; it just means that any content you embed in these files should also be available in text format or it won't be accessible to search engines."

Google software engineers Ron Adler and Janis Stipins who also serve on the indexing team said that all of the text that users can see as they interact with your Flash file will now be readable by the engine as well.

I'm sure this will be welcome news to Flash Web developers as in the past this has been an inherent flaw of Flash. According to Google, the improvements will automatically take effect and nothing will have to be done to Flash sites to make them readable. Google will automatically begin to index it, up to the limits of our current technical ability and recommends that if there are parts of the site that you do not want indexed (for example, copywrite or "loading" messages,)consider replacing the text within an image, which will make it effectively invisible to Google.

While Adobe is also collaborating with Yahoo! on its Flash reader technology, Yahoo! has not yet implemented the ability to read Flash for indexing purposes although it is certainly on the horizon for the #2 engine.

In a recent USA Today article Google's Matt Cutts reveals the top five tips for driving traffic to your Web site and getting it more highly ranked in the search engines.

The article is filled with great information and provides insight on what techniques are effective for optimizing Web sites in order to get them more highly ranked in the search engines.

Cutts' top tips include:

• Spotlight your search term on the page
• Fill in your "tags"
• Get other sites to "link" back to you
• Create a blog and post often
• Don't overdo it

In addition to the article, USA Today posted a 23-minute interview with Cutts discussing how to improve your site's search ranking - view it here.

Matt Cutts is widely recognized as a top search engine ranking expert.