In my lifetime information has always been readily available whether it be through the Library, Encyclopedia’s, or the Internet.  Today it’s easier then ever to get at any information in the comfort of your own home.  This can be good and bad.

Back in the day…I’m talking 80’s and early 90’s I used a thing called the library when searching for information.  I often times ask some of my younger friends (you know the type – social media savvy, under 22 years old, internet power surfers) if they’ve used card catalogs, microfiche, or any general library skills.   Usually they have no idea what I’m talking about.

Information In My Youth

I was among the lucky one’s throughout grade school.  As I recall my parents purchased the 1981 edition of the World Book Encyclopedia.  Our household was the envy of the block.  No longer did we always have to trek to the local library for information.  Every bit of history was right there, readily available in the World Book Encyclopedia.

Ten years passed…I used the Encyclopedia’s as if they were gods word on what was fact and fiction.  I still had to check out other supporting resources from the local library (newspaper articles, books, magazines, etc), but my time spent there was limited compared to my friends and fellow classmates.  I was able to work faster and get things done much quicker then everyone else for ten years.  Ten years…of reports and school work.  Ten years…as the main source in my bibliographys.

The year was 1991…10 years after the purchase of our beloved World Book Encyclopedia’s.  1991 was the year I moved out of the house and into the college dorms.  Something happened during my time at the University.  There was a shift in how we got information.  Of course, I no longer had the use of the World Book Encyclopdias in the comfort of my home, but instead the University library was a hop, skip, and jump away from my dorm room.  This is not the shift I’m talking about.  During my time at the University I learned about computers, networks, email, and the internet.  Back then the internet was not as it is today.  However, during my time in college the World Wide Web came to be and I discovered the web browser and the vast amounts of information available at the touch of a finger.

“University of Arizona – 5 or 6 of the best years of your life!” I remember seeing a t-shirt during my freshman year that had that line on it.  I laughed at the time , but just as the t-shirt predicted…I graduated in 1996 (year 5) and didn’t move back to California until 1997 (year6)…5 or 6 of the best years of my life.  Everything had changed when I returned from my life in Tucson.  Most of my friends had an AOL account and email address, a dialup connection, and at the time limited access to the internet (we payed for dialup access by the hour back then).  Information was readily available 24-7.  I could pull up a search engine (I think I was using Alta Vista at the time) and type a word and receive hundreds maybe thousands of articles on the subject.  The way we received information had definitely made a shift during my time in college.

Internet Information Overload

All of this information easily and readily available to us can be a good and bad thing.  The bad thing is what spawned this article.

While I’m sure there are many bads here are a few that were bugging me today.

• Statistics - in my case I’ve been monitoring my statistics daily sometimes even hourly this has got to stop.  Of course in the back of my mind I remember reading a recent  Problogger article specifically about Blogging Mistakes with becoming a Stat-A-Holic being number 17 on the list.
• Statistics Part II – the obsession continues as I search through several blog lists trying to compare my blog statistics to other blogs around the internet consuming hours of time.  By the way, it’s easy to see other blog statistics by checking their “Advertise” page we’re the author will often times reveal key information such as Unique Visitors, Pageviews, RSS subscribers, etc.
• Reading and Not Acting – reading can be healthy, but when it consumes your day to the point where you are not taking action.  That can be an unhealthy obssesion.

As I’ve already mentioned this list should be much longer, but I’m really just venting my own frustration and by the way…after mentioning and looking over Darren Rowse’s 21 Blogging Mistakes article I wanted to write a follow up post about all the blogging mistakes this blog currently makes.

I hope you enjoyed this little rant.  What about you?  Where did you come from? and how do you feel about the availability of information in the world today?

Google Page Rank gets updated about every three months and recently I noticed one of my blogs had a nice little PR bump from PR4 to PR5. Unfortunately I haven’t been working on this blog much so still no PR. Neither do I plan on working on building back links for this blog so we may never have a Page Rank nor any kind of following. It’s not a big deal as I’m just trying to document my results for selfish purposes.

This brings me to another goal that I can set for myself in the coming months. I’m currently working on 6 different websites and I set some money making goals in a previous post.  One additional goal I’d like to add is the PR rank for all six sites.  At the moment only one site has PR (PR2) all of the other sites are either shells or just domain names and an idea in my head.

My goal for these 6 sites is to have all sites between PR2 – 5 by the end of the year.  That gives me approximately 2 Google Page Rank updates and 7 months to achieve my goal.

My understanding is that the PR update I am talking about is only what is shown in the google toolbar and the actual page rank is always changing based on the dynamic nature of the web.

What about you?  Do you have a Google Page Rank Goal?