All Posts By

Ted Murphy

I’m Looking For a Few Good Runners

I have decided that I want to run the Ragner Relay Florida in November. It’s a 191 mile run across the state of Florida from ClearWater to Daytona Beach. This run will be in addition to The New York Marathon I am doing on Nov 1st and the Atlanta Marathon Nov 26th. Maddy Hubbard convinced me to do an ultra team, which means 6 of us will run about 30 miles each. Robert Nelson will be joining Maddy and I, so we just need three more people. You don’t need to be a rockstar, you just need to be able to finish.

If you are interested drop me an email ted@izea.com.

Ragnar Realy Florida Course

25 Things You Should Never Skimp On

I put together this list with the help of my readers. Thanks to all that contributed.

  1. A parachute
  2. Toilet paper
  3. Birth control
  4. Bacon
  5. Postage
  6. Sunscreen
  7. Brakes
  8. Bottled water in a foreign country
  9. A boob job
  10. Your financial advisor
  11. Whiskey
  12. Trash bags
  13. Underwear
  14. Shoes
  15. Tattoos
  16. Butter
  17. Your family
  18. Cheese
  19. Psychiatric therapy
  20. Internet connection
  21. An education
  22. A haircut
  23. Building materials
  24. Paying a parking meter
  25. Deodorant

But the best answer of all…. Life. Don’t skimp on one bit of it. Live life to the fullest.

Sticking With It

I haven’t blogged about running much lately, but that doesn’t mean I’m not still in training. I have three more marathons that I am running before the end of the year. My goal was to run three marathons this year, I will run five barring any unforseen injuries.

I’ll be running:

The Air Force Marathon
September 19th in Dayton, Ohio

The New York Marathon
November 1st in New York City

The Atlanta Marathon
November 26th in Atlanta, Georgia

I’m also registered for a few races in 2010.

Goofy’s Race and a Half Challenge
This is a half marathon one day then a full marathon the next day.  January 9-10 at Disney World in Orlando, Florida

Miami Marathon
January 31st in Miami, Florida

How about you? Are you sticking with it?

40% of My Traffic Comes from Twitter

trafficIf you are reading this blog post there is 40% chance (I include ow.ly visits) that you wound up here via a Twitter link. That’s an amazing fact when you consider that 8 months ago Twitter drove only 6.8% of traffic to this site. Part of this increase has to do with my Twitter followers growing, but the other aspect is the growth of Twitter and Twitter related sites.

If you are one of the people not following me on Twitter you can do so here.

While Google is still a major source of traffic it’s something I have little control over. No matter how much I tag, link and SEO my blog it is still a big crap shoot. On the other hand Twitter is something I can invest time in and see immediate results from. My investment has paid off and the numbers prove it. If you are serious about growing traffic to your blog you should be equally serious about creating a trusted community of followers on Twitter.

Special shout out to the guys over at Unique Blog Designs. They coded this blog for me and continue to promote me as a client. I am trying out their new affiliate theme for a side project. I will let you know how that works out on a later post.

Paparazzi for MacOSX

paparazziHave you ever needed to take a screen shot of a realllllly long web page? I have to all the time. In the past I used to take pictures of sections then piece them back together in Photoshop. It was a pain in the arse. That was until Veronique told me about Paparazzi. It is a simple yet incredibly powerful little app that takes great looking screen shots of full websites. You can set the capture sizes and output, even create a batch of sites that you want to image. It has already save me a solid hour this week. (5/5 Tongues)

Download it here for free

nyt

Help Me Complete The List

Earlier this morning I made an observation on Twitter that seems to have sparked a healthy amount of RTs and discussion. That inspired me to expand on my list and solicit feedback from my readers. I am hoping we can come up with a list of 100 things for a later post.

Things you should never skimp on

  1. A Parachute
  2. Toilet Paper
  3. Birth Control
  4. Bacon
  5. Postage

What do you think? Help me complete the list! Leave a lashing below.

PepsiCo Innovation Day : Fun

A few weeks back I had the opportunity to attend PepsiCo Innovation Day thanks to Stephanie Agresta of Porter Novelli and Bonin Bough of Pepsi. They bused a group of bloggers and new media types up to Pepsi headquarters in Purchase, NY for a day of learning, sharing and fun. I am going to break up the experience into a series of posts, starting with the fun.

Making My Own Soda

In the interest of dislcosure I want to share that PepsiCo provided me with lunch, Pepsi swag and the most soda I have ever had in a single day.