I am (Still) Shai Gluskin
I just read a really fun blog post on See What's Out There called This is Michael Hoffman which was followed up recently with, I am Still Michael Hoffman. Unlike me, Michael Hoffman has quite a common name. Not only does he share his name with a movie producer, or two, but there is also an anti-semite in the mix whose web site used to show up first, and now shows up second on Google searches of "Michael Hoffman."
The Michael Hoffman of the see3 blog is CEO of see3, a web visionary and entrepreneur. He also finds time to do philanthopy (he's founder of dogooder.tv. In other words, he's no slouch. And yet... he still has to share his web name space with all these other folk. And he can't really do anything about it without baling on his identity. Uggh.
One fun thing about the whole situation is that a bunch of other Michael Hoffmans have posted comments on his "I am Michael Hoffman" pieces. At least Web 2.0 makes it easy for them to find one another and commiserate. Other non-Michael Hoffmans who have common names have also commented/comiserated.
Michael is on a crusade to lower the Google ranking of the anti-semite Hoffman by asking folks to link to his "I am Michael Hoffman" pieces. That helps to up this Michael Hoffman's ranking and thereby lower the ranking of the bad Michael Hoffman. And so I have happily done here in this post.
Which makes me think about my own, very different, name space, "Shai Gluskin." I took on the nickname "Shai" before Google came along, so you can't say I changed it to Shai to claim a distinct name space from "Sam Gluskin." And indeed, there aren't any other Sam Gluskins either. Google would find me just as easily if I had never changed my name. I'm quite pleased with my Google search results, thank you.
Read Michael's articles and enjoy a laugh. But most of all, accept your name, it's the one you have, and if it's not so unique, you've got plenty of folks with which to commune.
Comments
3 comments postedShalom Shai,
I am here from your comment on Michael Hoffman's blog.
I feel very lucky to have the kind of name I do. Aside from everything else, it certainly makes it easier to achieve a high Google ranking.
I have a lot of friends in the blogosphere with great work, but who are hard to find on search engines because of this-- even when you search for them by name.
Let's consider ourselves lucky and thank our parents as well. :)
Great blog, I'll be back.
Maya
I love what you've done with the site! Great colors and great pic at the top. I also like the slight modification to the site name.
Less important: I love solving the math problems before commenting. It makes me feel bright!
Hi Peter,
Thanks for the kind words. On point number 1, the theme is an open-source Drupal theme developed by roopletheme. I customized and simplified it. I mostly light text on dark, except for photoblog sites. This site has a bunch of photography, and, on whim, thought I'd give it a try.
The image is mine, from a set I call "Winter Sunset" taken last February.
Glad you appreciate the math problem. There have been two spam comments that got past it. This is considered a pretty low level of spam protection. Hope that doesn't make you feel worse:) How do you feel after failing to read those bizarre/illegible image "captchas"?
Again, thanks for stoppin' by.