Lens Launch: Signs and Symptoms of a Stroke (My 100th Squidoo Lens)

One hundred lenses. Finally. It took a long time to reach this milestone, nearly seven years. Although it’s a symbolic one, I wanted to mark it with a lens that meant something.

Both my grandmothers died as a result of stroke. Both my grandmothers-in-law have suffered a stroke and are dealing with its debilitating effects on them.

The damage caused by a stroke can be reduced if it’s caught early. Everyone should learn how to recognize a stroke. That’s why my 100th lens is on the warning signs of a stroke.

Yes, there are already lots of websites and publications with this information. No, it won’t rake in big earnings. That’s not its purpose. Hopefully, someone somewhere will read it and be prepared to recognize when someone near them is suffering a stroke and get them the care they need in time to make a difference.

This is the most personal lens I’ve written. It’s dedicated to my wonderful grandmothers and grandmothers-in-law.

Time to go work on lens #101…

Catch of the Month: My New Jersey Wine Quest

Each month I’ll feature a lens that I discovered while exploring Squidoo.

NJ winesThis month’s catch highlights the value of personal recommendations in a lens.

In My New Jersey Wine Quest, lensmaster Sockii shares her quest to visit every winery in the Garden State. I’m originally from NJ and enjoy wine, so this lens got my interest when I found it.

The lens includes a listing of all the wineries in the Garden State Wine Growers’ Association and Sockii’s detailed review of each winery she’s visited including pictures she took there. She also explains the motivation behind her quest.

Her reviews of the wineries are honest and personal. They include her impression of the winery and each wine she tasted. I like that she shared her wine preferences (dry vs. sweet, oaked vs. unoaked chardonnay, etc) which helps the reader relate each review to their own wine tastes.

The review that interested me most was for Auburn Road Vineyards. It’s not far from the route we travel when visiting family in NJ and, most importantly, Sockii describes their wine as, “very good, some of the best I’ve tasted in New Jersey to date.”

She was right. When my wife and I were in NJ this month, we visited Auburn Road and really liked it. Definitely the best NJ wines we’ve tried so far. It’s also a cool place to hang out and enjoy the wine. We bought several bottles. Two of them (we’ve already given the rest as gifts) are in the image above with the other NJ wines in our wine rack.

Thanks to Sockii for the reviews, spreading the word of NJ’s growing wine industry and the tip about Auburn Road. Without her lens I might not have discovered this outstanding winery.

(Sockii still has over 20 NJ wineries to visit and review. So visit the lens and give her some
encouragement!)

Image by Mac33

Check Your eBay Module Search Settings

While updating my Hess Trucks lens yesterday, I noticed something strange. Most of the eBay modules showed no search results. No listings means nothing for a visitor to click and potentially buy on eBay. That’s not good if you like earning commissions.

I copied the search criteria from one of these modules directly into eBay’s search tool and got a “Your search returned 0 items” message. That was followed by another message, “Search using the wildcard symbol (*) is no longer supported.” What!?

That’s right, eBay got rid of wildcard searches. To clarify, eBay took away a useful and powerful tool for shoppers to find the specific items they’re interested in buying. Brilliant! If I had stock in eBay, I’d consider selling it.

How can lensmasters (and eBay shoppers) replace wildcards in our searches?

You’ll need to build a new search query to find listings you want displayed in your eBay modules. Read eBay’s advanced search engine options page for info on constructing search queries. Test your new query on eBay. When you’re satisfied with the results, update your module and republish the lens.

In my case, I had used the wildcard to find items from a specific decade (e.g. 198* for trucks from the 1980s). So I replaced 198* with a Boolean OR search. Using eBay’s syntax that search is now (1980, 1981, 1982, 1983, 1984, 1985, 1986, 1987, 1988, 1989). It’s ugly but it works.

If your new query is long (my query above went from 4 to 51 characters), you might have to break up your listings into multiple modules due to eBay’s 100 character limit on search queries. The important thing is to check your eBay modules now and replace any wildcards.

Remembering The HMS Bounty

HMS BountyThe HMS Bounty was the first tall ship I ever toured. I was a kid, maybe 8 years old, and was thrilled at walking on the deck of a sailing ship. That sparked an interest in me and I’ve enjoyed seeing and touring many tall ships since then.

You never forget your first, and touring the Bounty is an experience that I often think of when working on my tall ship related lenses.

The HMS Bounty was lost at sea two days ago during Hurricane Sandy. 15 of her crew were rescued by the Coast Guard. One of them was unresponsive and later died. Her captain is still missing. I pray they find him soon and my condolences go to the family of the deceased crew member.

Let’s also remember the brave men and women of the US Coast Guard who risked their lives to rescue the Bounty‘s crew in treacherous conditions. (That link has video of the rescue. Amazing work.)

Image credit: Magic Madzik, used under Creative Commons.

Lens Launch: Anti Stick Figure Family Stickers

We Ate Your Stick FamilyWhile driving home recently, I spotted a stick figure family sticker on the car in front of me. Only this was different. The stick figures were running.

At the next stop light I realized they were being chased by another stick figure in a hockey mask wielding a chainsaw! Underneath were the words, “Nobody Cares About Your Stick Figure Family”.

I laughed. It was the comic relief I needed driving home from a long day at work. A few days later I saw a zombie version like the one pictured.

Stick family stickers were kinda cool when they first came out but now it seems that every other car has one. These “nobody cares” anti-stick family stickers are a funny way to tell the world that the stick figure family trend has reached its peak.

What lens ideas have you gotten while sitting in traffic?

Image credit: darinrmcclure, used under Creative Commons.

Farewell to the Flickr Module

Last month Squidoo abruptly retired the Flickr module because Flickr appeared to be blocking most of their images from loading on Squidoo lenses. Squidoo HQ and several lensmasters tried to get Flickr’s technical assistance on this with no success.

I’ll miss the Flickr module. It had some shortcomings but was an easy way to add good photos to lenses. It was also helpful in generating click outs and getting traffic from image searches.

I understand and agree with Squidoo’s decision to retire the module, but the way they did it was horribly executed. The retirement decision was announced on June 15 with no date given for when it would go away. The module disappeared from public view 3 days later. That doesn’t count as good advance warning for lensmasters to prepare and make changes before the module went away.

In the announcement, HQ said that, “When the module goes away there’s nothing you have to do. It will simply disappear from your lenses.” They got that half right, it did simply disappear. But there’s lots that this sudden disappearance required lensmasters to do if they were using the Flickr module.

Depending on how you used it, a disappearing Flickr module could mean anything from losing a few non-essential images to your lens morphing into an empty site because the bulk of your content went missing. For anyone that wrote text in their Flickr modules, this module retirement was devastating because that text also disappeared from your viewable lens and the sight of the search engines.

I had some lenses in that latter category. Worst hit were my tour an aircraft carrier, tour a battleship and sail a tall ship lenses. All of them used a Flickr module for nearly every ship featured. Each module had images and all of my written info for that ship in it. When the Flickr module disappeared, so did the content for those lenses.

Fortunately, I saw the announcement that the module was gone from view and was able to add Text modules and copy the content into them within a day of the Flickr modules disappearing. The lenses didn’t have many images, but at least the written content and links to the ships’ websites were available. If I’d been on vacation, those lenses would’ve been sunk.

Most of my Squidoo time over the last month has been spent fixing up existing lenses with Flickr modules instead of working on new lenses. I’m still in the slow process of finding, selecting, downloading, recording and uploading images to those text modules and updating other lenses that used Flickr images. Since Flickr’s image blocking also impacts images linked to in HTML code, I’m updating lenses that used that, too. (I mostly did that in Text List and Link List modules so I sent a feature request to HQ asking for the image upload functionality be added to those modules. Please do the same, hopefully they’ll add it if enough of us ask.)

What should Squidoo have done instead?

  1. Communicated the date when the module would be retired and no longer publicly viewable. This is one of the original Squidoo modules, used nearly 400,000 times according to the Add Modules tool. How could HQ not give lensmasters a date and time to prepare for its retirement? Makes no sense to me.
  2. Modified the module so that the images and their links wouldn’t display but the module’s text would still display. That would’ve given lensmasters time to adjust without taking away our content overnight. The module already had the ability to not display a selected image if it didn’t have an appropriate Creative Commons license. This filter could have easily been modified to not display all images.

This is a good reminder of why it’s important to back up your lens content (something I don’t do but should start). The wording of the June 18th announcement sounded like HQ considered deleting all of the content in the Flickr modules before they realized how many people had written content into them. That would have been disastrous.

Farewell, Flickr module, you’re already missed.

How did the Flickr module retirement affect your lenses? Are you still making changes because of it?

Image credit: simminch, used under Creative Commons.

Catch of the Month: Visit My Tasmania

Each month I’ll feature a lens that I discovered while exploring Squidoo.

Buy at Art.comI’ve been a fan of throughglasseyes‘ tall ship lenses for a long time. This week I found her lens on visiting Tasmania, Australia, where she lives.

Margaret writes about many of the unique places and things this beautiful island has to offer. She shares her favorite Tasmanian sights and the reasons why she fell in love with the island.

There are plenty of her own photos to share the island’s scenery. Some were taken from the deck of a tall ship, the Lady Nelson, that she sailed on.

Australia is one of the top 3 places in the world I want to visit. When I go, I’ll want to visit Tasmania as well, thanks to Margaret’s lens

Image: “Port Arthur, Tasmania, Australia”, available at Art.com

Lens Launch: Fantasy Baseball T-Shirts

Buy at Art.comOpening day of baseball season is just over a month away. That means fantasy baseball players have started joining leagues and preparing for their drafts. A fun way to impress your league-mates is with a fantasy baseball t-shirt.

I searched through lots of different baseball shirts. This lens features the best and funniest that I found, including some shirts and onesies for the kids so they can share the fun with their parents. These t-shirts also make a cool gift for your favorite fantasy baseball player.

Image: “Mickey Mantle, 1956”, available at Art.com

Celebrating Six Years On Squidoo

My Squidoo TrophiesYesterday was my 6th Squidiversary on Squidoo! Here’s a pic of the new 6 year trophy that appeared on my Squidoo bio page last night. I’m not sure if that’s a cake or a cupcake.

My Squidoo journey started as an experiment. I had no idea that I’d stick with it for six years. But I’ve had fun building lenses and learned a lot along the way. Making a little money helps, too. I wouldn’t have been able to invest this much of my time on Squidoo if not for the money.

Speaking of money, did you know that when Squidoo came out of beta, lenses made about 25 cents per month from the ad pool?

That was before the pay tiers were added. Now, a top tier lens gets over $50 from the ad pool payout. So Squidoo has grown at a strong rate. I’m looking forward to being part of Squidoo’s continued growth for (hopefully) many more years.

I was also reminded yesterday of how strong and helpful the Squidoo community is. That’s something that I’m glad has been a part of Squidoo since the early days.

To everyone who’s ever rated, liked, lens rolled, blessed, commented on, shared or just visited one of my lenses in the last six years…Thank You!

Catch of the Month: Toads in the Garden

Each month I’ll feature a lens that I discovered while exploring Squidoo.

Toad in a potWinter is a good time to start planning your garden. There’s a long list of things to decide. What kind of flowers or vegetables to plant, where to plant them, when to plant them and where the toads will live are a few.

You read that last one right. Toads like to eat critters that eat your plants, so encourage them to hang out in your garden. How do you do that?

Read AnthonyAltorenna‘s DIY lens on how to build a toad house. It covers all the steps and material needed to build one for your garden. He’s included photos of his own toad houses and helpful info about toads. I think it’s also the first lens I’ve seen that mentions using wampum.

It’s a good, easy to follow how to guide on an unusual topic. Perfect combination for a Squidoo lens.

Making one of these sounds like a good project for the kids, too. I’ve got an old cracked terracotta pot that I’m sure my kids would love to decorate and turn into a toad house. Thanks for the idea and info, Anthony!

Image credit: champmankj75, used under Creative Commons License.