If you have no idea what Delicious, Technorati, social or bookmarking mean, take a look at this excellent educational video. Technophobes can relax, but teachers and tutors should beware - the new paradigm where tech meets finger tips and paper scraps is here. Thanks to AdesBlog for the tip.



If you are clueless about RSS and want a really simple 'splanation, there is help at hand too from the same maestro of simplicity - a video wtf is RSS!

I recently received some devastating news from my on-line blog hosts, A Small Orange - and it made me very happy.

The domain thepisstakers.com has reached 80% of its bandwidth limit (8106.08/10000.00 Megs).

Oh

Yippee-i-ay, Merry Christmas to the best blog hosts, and thanks for holding up under the 8.10608 GB barrage of traffic in the last couple of weeks.

And a Merry Christmas to the human hosts at A Small Orange too. Looks like their business model will work, and next year I will need to upgrade my package from a $5 Small to a $10 Medium. (Sounds like I am at MacDonalds)

Halleluja, ASO blog host supremos

If anyone is looking for a totally reliable place to host their blog or website, I cannot recommend the Small Orange guys enough. They were always courteous in the face of questions from a dumbass newbie; prompt with their customer support and very knowledgeable. What more do you want?

One click to install your self-hosted Wordpress blog? Done.

Free hosting? Well, free might sound good, but if you read around, you get what you pay for. ASO charge $25 a year for a Tiny package to test the water, which sounds pretty close to free, but enough that you can expect a good service from them!

Unlimited bandwidth? As you read above, my current limit is 10GB per month. A service offering unlimited traffic might sound good, but it is a red herring, (or did I mean lie?) because every server reaches its limit some day. And the people offering unlimited bandwidth are the sort who cram too many domains onto a server and the moment that the porn pedalling domain gets a rush of traffic, everyone else's service gets cranked down.

I think on balance, ASO have got it right, and you should check them out.

(I don't get any cash for writing this, but if you did sign up, I would get some free hosting which would be nice.)

Once upon a time I was struggling for a tech idea to write about. But never let it be said that I am permanently lost for new material. Ka-ching, a very thorough post about Google mail desktop alerts had appeared (ironically) via email subscription from Untwisted Vortex That man saved my bacon and filled me with original inspiration again.

Google alerts. What can I say? They are ground-breaking and very useful, (or as Google would say: )

Google Alerts are email updates of the latest relevant Google results (web, news, etc.) based on your choice of query or topic.

I cannot add anything else to the conversation, except I have the alerts installed and every day the Googloids send me an email to let me know who has written about topics I am interested in - funny quotes, Pisstakers... And every day I am inspired.

Keep on reading, dude

There are some pushy buggers around on the internet. If webmasters aren't installing viruses and trojans without your knowledge, script kiddies are bombarding you with pop-ups full of viagra and casino news.

Then there are scripts that create pseudo links to other sites in order to create traffic. And if clever scripts fail, there are social engineers, the ones who make you lose your senses and trick/bore/wear you down into clicking on "Yes, download this unknown program" just to make the annoying message box go away. And let's just add porn, woven sneakily into the whole rich tapestry of online ugliness.

Put the whole sorry lot together and you could end up with something unexpected like this on your screen:



I would like to politely ask social engineers at hardcore porno site, IsMyMovie to run along and re-write their code, so it doesn't look like they are forcing me to install a video codec that may or may not kill my computer.

Kill my computer?

Am I being harsh? Maybe it is a terrible misunderstanding and the codec is kosher? OK. Let the reader decide.

For a start, I didn't find their porn site while browsing the internet from a darkened room. I found their link in my Awstats. According to my statistics, they have been sending traffic to my site. Oh really! Show me the link! There is none. I am sure Google would love to know they have been duped as well!

And then, there's the impossible loop they set up, trying to force me to agree to download their VideoAccessCodec.

Luckily on a Mac, I am sort of immune to PC viruses, so after 3 dances through their loop, rather than close the browser, I pressed OK.

As an unsocial person, it killed me to do as they wanted, but I wasn't too suicidal, because I knew my browser and / or operating system would end the stupidity. I clicked Yes, and as expected, the inbuilt security in the browser warned me that I was being forced to download an application. Did I want to really really proceed?



I didn't feel predisposed to loading an exe file on my computer and I canceled.

Watch out

After Googling, I came up with a series of warnings about the VideoAccessCodec trojan virus bad boy. It ain't good. Had I been on a PC and in a hurry to view some porn, I could have been in trouble.

If you are angling for a new computer for Christmas , perhaps you could seal the deal by saying "Yes" to download unknown programs!

Amazon have launched an e-book reader called the Kindle and opinions are a-fire. Walt Mossberg, tech expert at the Wall Street Journal, doesn't like it, whereas an investment "expert" at Motley Fool thinks it is going to be the hottest device ever. How can they both be right, or are they both wrong?!!

No Moss without fire

Mr Moss berg was the guy who pimped Apple from ground zero to the current heights. If his opinion counts with all tech products, Kindle has been snuffed out before it has even started.

I’ve been testing the Kindle for about a week, and I love the shopping and downloading experience. But the Kindle device itself is just mediocre. While it has good readability, battery life and storage capacity, both its hardware design and its software user interface are marred by annoying flaws. It is bigger and clunkier to use than the Sony Reader, whose second version has just come out at $300

So he thinks it is a great device for buying and reading lots of ebooks, but (reading between the lines) it is bigger ie closer to real book size than a Sony reader. Is this a negative review?

Where fools fear to read, a Fool writes

When he first saw it, Rick, a Motley Fool investing specialist slammed the Kindle way harder than Mossberg. Big, bulky and how much? $400 to read a few ebooks, I don't think so. But then he had an epiphany, he became a producer of ebooks, not a consumer! ie He wrote a crappy book years ago and decided to publish it with Amazon. Suddenly the Kindle took on a life of its own. ka-ching.

He predicts that the Kindle will take off big big time, because every budding writer in the world can now vanity publish their work to the Kindle Amazon ebook store. (Writers can also price their book as they see fit, and get a 40% split of the proceeds.) According to his hypothesis, sales of Kindles will shoot to the moon when the retail price drops from $399, and all those eager writer publishers become major e-book readers.

Conclusion

So who is right, who is wrong? Does the Kindle replace real paper and books that won't fold properly, however hard you crease them? Is it just a fad product that Apple will do better in a couple of years' time? What do you think? Do you even care because you never read books any more?

Unlike the airlines, technology company stocks have taken off this year. Prices are higher than ever and climbed quicker than ever. And, if anyone tells you that this is a repeat of a 1990's tech stock bubble on the back of a fast buck, think again. Even as America jitters over tumbling house prices and meteoric oil, much of tech is still holding firm.

Long term quality wins

On-going winners, like (AAPL) Apple, the iPod, iPhone and Mac folks; (AMZN) Amazon, the biggest on-line retailer on earth; and (SYNA) Synaptics, of touchpads and touchscreens fame have a few basic qualities in common. They are examples of great companies with cool technology, good management, spreading tentacles overseas, and a story that goes back several years prior to this recent meteoric stock price rise.

For their troubles and foresight, the Jobs, Bezos and Lees, the hard working and inspirational driving forces behind these companies, are now richer than we can ever dream of. However, before you start spitting nails and quoting fat cat stories, the biggest winners overall in the 3 above stories are the company owners ie the people who invested in shares in these companies. Annoying but true.

Don't you just love those shareholders who did no actual work, beyond putting their money where their mouths were, and running the risk of going gray with worry / losing their shirts. There is a lesson about patience and belief in there somewhere!

Microsofty, not so soft any more

I tacked Microsoft on the end of the charts, because they are a special case of long term success. For years they have done nothing, floundering under the weight of their virus-ridden XP and Internet Explorer, but like all great companies, they have had something big up their sweaty Steve Balmer sleeve!

In this case, they almost did an Apple (5 years after Apple!) and tried to start Windows from scratch. It didn't quite work that way, but finally they launched Vista, tacked on an X-Box gizmo to their armory, and as sure as night follows day, the years and years of development and billions of investment is starting to pay off. I believe they made $5bn profit last quarter, 4 times the value of Synaptics whole company!

For evidence of how blood, sweat, and tears of laughter can bring you untold success in tech, I bring you this age old favorite.

Think long term tech

At the moment the US stock market is in disarray, and all these tech stocks are down a bit. Luckily, these companies' stories haven't changed and their business overseas is growing apace to more than compensate for sad US consumer prospects. Make of that what you will. I am not a stock adviser but I like what is going on in tech and retirement is never that far away, especially if a stock or two pops unexpectedly!

I will keep the charts in the side bar so you can see where our tech friends are heading.

If you live in a basement and spend your spare time staring at a computer screen, eating chips... and you feel like you are missing out on life - you are!!! But hey, there is no excuse for ever being short of ideas for activities, and more importantly, you need never be short of people to meet up with. Thank you Meet up.

The snappily named Meet Up site claims to be able to hook you up with cool like-minded people in your locality. Hang out with non-threatening folks who share your interest in knitting, crochet and sewing. If that is too racy for you, kick back with fellow star gazers and observe the galaxy, or discuss your chihuahua issues with keen enthusiasts living just around the corner. The sky is the limit at Meet Up.



And if you have any reservations about pow wows at watering holes, meet up with local wine-makers for a gut-wrenching time.

It all sounds good and dandy, meeting like-minded individuals, but sometimes you might be better off staying isolated in your basement. You know what I am talking about if you have ever been to the sort of event where you walk in, realise these people really aren't your kind, and wish you could walk straight out again, but you get spotted.

Would you use the service? Have you? Care to share?

Between a complete absence of internet cafes in New Jersey and programing oversights of childlike proportions by HP and a payroll company, it was a stressful few hours trying to print 4 pages of payroll info off the internet.

HP driver bull

HP are such a great company that the software writers for their PSC1510 all-in-one printer/scanner/chaos creator will not let you install the driver anywhere other than on the C drive. This meant that saps like us with their Windows install on the E drive are unable to use a piece of fairly good HP machinery. Thanks HP, and maybe their multi-million dollar software house should take note of the pointer on one help forum, Any software written properly for Windows will recognise the drive where the Operating System is installed, and load accordingly. Looking at the list of software currently occupying the E drive, I would say HP are in a minority of one with their lack of foresight. And to think I was about to buy HP shares on the basis that they have turned the corner and are once again a great company. Wrong.

No Firefox?

Nowadays, if someone wants to see your payroll info, you don't ask your boss, you send them along to specialist payroll companies. However great the providers of this service may claim to be, the company handling my wife's payroll info is another entity that I would not touch with an investment barge pole, even if you paid me. Their central database only works with Internet Explorer. How great can such a short-sighted standards non-compliant company be?

No cyber cafes

Faced with a PC that cannot print, I tried a Mac that can print, only to find I am locked out of a particular website because I don't have IE7. Last option, I needed to find a cyber cafe. Next revelation. Internet penetration in the home is now so extensive in New Jersey that, according to several Yahoo Yellow Pages-type searches, there are no cyber cafes within 50 miles of my house - and even that was only open weekends. I didn't think of a public library, doh, and in the end had to ask an office supplies shop if we could use their computer to access the payroll website.

He didn't quite understand the personal nature of the info we were accessing. Picture the look on Mrs Ed's face when the guy asks for the URL, and then for her password and ... He caught on and was kind enough to let her use the main PC and all was well. But really, what a fricking pollaver.

Conconclusion

We have all the kit at home, but not quite the precise kit required of 2 inefficient corporations who are arrogant enough to think that the world should revolve around their peculiar in-house practices. End result, us little people have to waste half a day trying to print basic info that years ago we could have got posted to us overnight, leaving us free to actually be productive. Progress sucks.

About a year ago I made the first steps into web hosting. I didn't know a thing about setting up a new domain, ftp-ing was just a mildly amusing acronym and MySQL, re-directs and 404 Not Found pages were just meaningless words. A good job I found A Small Orange (ASO).

Everyone on the tech forums raved about them, and they even had a waiting list. I felt quite chuffed when I waited up til 12.00 and 3 seconds and bagged myself one of their daily quotas. (I suspect it was more about great marketing than practicalities, but they had a good thing going and I wanted a slice of it.) I took a gamble and signed up for their not quite totally crazy cheap package at $5 a month.

You may wonder, how could I go wrong? but you really can go wrong, big time, if you pick the wrong hosts.

Dreamy daniel hosting

The big trap is falling for huge numbers - Sign up, sign up - 250GB of bandwidth, 30GB of storage, all for $10 a month yadda yadda, oh yay. It appears to be a thinly veiled scam that will most likely see your site installed on a server that is jam packed full of other sites also living under the illusion they can do what they like within these ginormous capacities. Somewhere along the line, though, these massive theoretical figures they quote mean nothing, because once a server is working flat out, they just put a brake on everyone's usage. This can often leave sites high and dry, loading sporadically when there is a gap in demand.

It is hard enough getting visitors in the first place, but to know your web host is driving them away because they are badly serving a thousand porn sites alongside yours, is a bit demoralising. And if you are trying to make money off your site, the wasted $10 just adds insult to injury.

At least with ASO, I know (or I believe I saw a log that showed) that there are 50 sites on the same server, and we all operate within practical (not theoretical worse case) limits that the server can cope with when we come close to our individual thresholds. With my package I have 400MB of disk space and I can use up to 10GB of bandwidth a month. With 200 MB of material installed and no more than 4GB of bandwidth used last month, (or 8000 visitors / 30000 page views in real money) it is a plenty big enough package so far and I suspect would serve most blogs, handsomely for years.

Technical support

Another issue many people have is the lack of help when they have issues with their site. As it happened, it wasn't critical that I was clueless about setting up a domain, and there is plenty of help getting your head around MySQL, re-directs and 404 Not Found pages. However, when all else fails (ie the technical terms get too much to bear) ASO have been unbelievably helpful to a numbnutz like myself. I can only assume they don't get many problems and their staff sit around praying for something to do, because they have spent loads of time helping me out.

I hope I don't get anyone in trouble, but one guy set up my mail forwarding for me, I gave him my password and let them muck about with whatever needed mucking about with. And recently I had trouble with firewalls and god knows what and I didn't have a clue how to solve it. The ASO guy said, I can't help you because our support doesn't stretch that far, but if you do this, this and this, you may be good to go. Needless to say, it went!

And they have the ubiquitous C-Panel where you can easily organise your site behind the scenes, upload files, run email... and Fantastico is a one-click wizard for totally painless installations of software, like Wordpress, Joomla and dozens of other scary-looking PhP / MySQL nightmarish-to-novices dealios.

The imperfections

It wouldn't be right to say that if you sign up to ASO you can expect a flawless 100% experience, because we are talking computers, right! Servers need to be maintained, so it seems like most days the site isn't accessible for a few minutes. I think this is more annoying to me than to visitors, because it seems to coincide with Mrs Ed screaming that we need to go out after I have foolishly said, Just a moment, it won't take 2 seconds to publish this article. Maybe for $10 you can enjoy no downtime or domestic ear ache whatsoever?

In conconclusion

All said and done, I don't think you can go too far wrong with A Small Orange. You can start small and know they will expand to meet your needs, to the point you can have your very own virtual server all to yourself. Having said that, the last time I looked, they were out of those too, due to demand. Perhaps one day in the future I will have to wait up past midnight to get a slice of that action?

As everyone is into transparency these days, I should say I get nothing for writing this in terms of hard cash, but if you happen to mention The Pisstakers when you sign up, I may get a month or two credited to my account. But that isn't why I am writing this. ASO rocks!!!!

A quick round-up of breaking unreal tech news, starting with Amazon's announcement of a new online payments service.

We continue to believe that Amazon is one of the most underappreciated innovators in the consumer Internet sector," wrote analyst Scott Devit. The analyst said Amazon's program heralds an era of improving and new electronic payment programs.

In other words, Paypal and Mastercard and Visa are dead, long live AmazonPal. The only thing that marred the analyst's analysis was the unreal statement that he would buy Amazon for mid $60's. Er, right, when the shares have just been $86 and there is no reason to suppose that Amazon's performance isn't going to continue its meteoric rise, who wouldn't want a $25 discount?!

The real unreal Steve Jobs

The blogger lampooning Steve Jobs as part of an experiment on corporate leader blogging, has been unmasked, at last. He was amazed that it took so long to unveil his identity, and all you can say is - so much for the ability of the average Joe geek to expose anonymous bloggers. Basking in his exposure, the unreal Steve Jobs filled us in on his next move.

Well, I'm taking a few days off to sit in a lake and do some yoga and meditation and non-thinking. Then I'm coming back next week, badder than ever, with a new sponsor - my homeboys at Forbes.com.

If anyone at Forbes wants to lampoon Ed the Editor, feel free.

Virtual world on your desktop

It has been a while since you needed to sit with 2 computers on your desk, neck swivelling madly, in order to enjoy Mac and Windows simultaneously. The virtual desktop is here, and here to stay. The main protagonist is VMware, and they just released their latest greatest version of Fusion. A shame that the only review they have on VersionTracker is in triplicate and is so glowing it must have been written by the unreal VMware CEO?

I took a look at recommendation software being developed by titans such as Blockbuster, eBay and iTunes. Instead of copying the Amazon tactic of recommending an item for future purchase based on your past purchases, the Blockbusters and co look deeper into your tastes than you might imagine in order to plant shopping ideas in your head.

You will love this sexy car

We are a tapestry of tastes, like and dislikes, and the retailers' software writers know where to look in order to build up a picture or profile of their customers.

Wouldn't it be great if there were a company that takes your interest in porn and allies it to a current search you are making for cars. Where is the connection bewteen the two, you may ask? Off the top of my head, the software would probably recommend you buy a Hot Rod or the 2008 Chinese edition of the Well hung Mustang, or perhaps at a stretch a badly spelt Ford Focus.

You will love this sexy perfume, car lovers

The recommendations get easier to make however when you cross your taste in cars with perfume. No need to algorithmify and extrapolate in order to suggest a suitable perfume based on your preferred muscle car. The manufacturers of sexy Ferraris have already saved programmers a lot of trouble and used their allure to produce a high octane Donna Ferrari scent. Lambourghini have a cologne too that would obviously satisfy the requirements of a car nerd trying to smell as hot as their 600hp motor. Quite what a mustang owner would think of dousing themselves in Mustang scent, though, I can only imagine.

Who is harnessing this recommendation software?

StumbleUpon was bought by eBay and who knows how the auction guys are going to harness that "preferred blog" technology to squeeze another bid out of us.

Blockbuster can already suggest you a film you never heard of with a storyline you would never select - and leave you happily adding more to your "Must Watch" list. (I would add in a recommended snack too, for good measure.)

And iTunes just sold their 3 billionth track, so their recommendations algorithms must be doing something right.

The future of recommendation software

Think about the swathe of data that we, the consumers, have made available to on-line companies trying to sell us the next big must-have thing. Every time you browse, order, or enquire, you leave some evidence of your tastes behind. As we aren't going to stop browsing, ordering and enquiring any time soon, there are no limits to the recommendations we will be bombarded with in the future. It's time to get used to being upsold and fleeced with monotonous and sophisticated regularity.

Never again will it be as simple as: "You bought Harry Potter One so you are going to love Harry Potter 2 thru 12" The new kids are bringing more factors into the mix and before we know it we will be ordering Hogwarts Cologne and riding Honda broomsticks.

According to Insight Research Corp. the market for what is known in the trade as Presence-based services will reach nearly $23bn. (This equates to about 400,000€ if the dollar keeps sliding at current rates.)

One example of a Presence-based service is Instant Messaging. This is a huge hit in Asia, where the most common message left on telephones and PCs is "I will be leaving the Nike factory at 2am, please don't forget to set my alarm for 5am so I am not late for my 6am shift."

When asked to comment on this IM phenomenon, Nike Skyped back to say that this new paradigm of Presence-based services has influenced their business practice no end. The new thinking is, that most unskilled people in Asia are happy to present themselves at a sweat shop in order to earn $3 a day. In order not to appear too soft, Nike require their presence (and sweat) at the factory for 19 out of every 24 hours. It may sound harsh, but we offer flexi-time and the carbon-based units working for us can choose which day per month not to grace us with their presence. Never let it be said that multi-nationals take advantage of low-wage economies.

Apparently Nike are spot on with their interpretation of the Presence-based theory and their questionable approach to labor. According to Robert Rosenberg, Insight Research!

Presence-based services are all about saving time and effort, so both consumers and businesses see value in these applications...

See, no mention of benefits for labor!

PTT

The list of presence-services is vast, and adoption is gaining plenty of momentum, especially since the dinosaur execs in telecommunications realised that their teen daughters' preferred mode of communication is applicable to businessmen too.

Push to talk (PTT) is another such presence-based such service taking off. Bottom line, with everyone so busy nowadays, you are either pushed for time to talk, or you need to be pushed to talk. Corporations are chomping at the bit to provide PTT in a business like, price-gouging manner. (A slice of $23bn / €400,000 is certainly something to get excited about if you are a multi-national corporate CEO looking for ways to fund your annual bonuses without pissing off shareholders.)

JIC U R ROFL @ POS lack of knowledge of abbreviations for IM, here is a quick guide to the level of grammatical correctness we can look forward to in the future.

Ed asks that anyone familiar with PTT to please explain how great it is.

With minutes to go before the release of Amazon's last quarter earnings, the question is, Will the biggest store on earth continue its rise and rise, or will a bad day on Wall St short circuit the company's progress? For the record, I believe my (AMZN) stocks, all 50 of them, will rise back to $75 - by next week! And please, take no notice of my prediction.

(AMZN) up the creek without a paddle?

When Jeff Bezos produced his first ever earnings report, the Earth must have seemed a big place with annual earnings lower than a slow week at B&N. While Barnes and Noble were polishing the mortar between their bricks, laughing their smug heads off at Amazon, I can remember someone else beaming at Amazon.

My father, a bookworm, was getting all excited when he ordered his first on-line book. Even he could see that Amazon's retailing strategy was the future and how cool that any old person could get their shopping delivered to their door within 24 hours. Hundreds of millions of people in 2007 have the same opinion now as Jeff Bezos (and my father!) had back in the old days of red ink and hemorrhaged accounts.

AMZN tech stock

The golden rule of owning a stock is "Understand your company." Bottom line, it took me a lot of reading before I grasped the popular concept that Amazon were not a tech stock. Just like any retail outlet in a mall, Amazon sell things - the only difference being, they live on the internet and don't make you wait in line while underpaid workers swap boyfriend/ girlfriend stories.

However, what most people didn't quite understand back in the day, was that Amazon were a latent tech stock too.

Amazon Web Services

You don't build a store like Amazon using Quicken books and Microsoft Access database. The brains behind AMZN were techno heads of the highest order, and until 2002, their awesome knowledge and innovation was kept close to their chest and prioritised for in-house development. A softly softly tactic cost Amazon lots of money, which perpetuated the myth that Amazon would never be profitable.

Some people wondered what catapaulted the company stocks up 60% in the last few months. The popular reason is the free shipping for Prime members. I don't know that is the full story.

Do you remember the image of Mr Invincible trying to get through that tube? Same here with Amazon. There was so much momentum from technology and innovation, and the bottom line is that the 5-year investment in projects like S3 online storage services, and other trojan technical horses has exploded Amazon into a bearer of high prices for shareholders.

TicTap and Amazon and co

For a couple of years I have been receiving emails from the hallowed Amazon S3 developers inviting me to potter around their on-line storage ideas and try out alpha shopping carts. I was happy to oblige. It is fun trying to break whacky things. As I played, 300,000 very clever techies were tapping deep into Amazon's database, looking under leaves, and writing truly extraordinary programs geared to making more sense of Amazon's rambling global store.

This is what was going on 2005 when AMZN were wallowing.


I love it when people think ahead!

Impact of S3 etc

I use TicTap as a simple way to pick books from niche topics, so imagine the benefits to Amazon if hundreds of thousands of people install that program across the internet. Then multiply out the number of TicTap type applications that do an equal or even better job, and install them on mega sites frequented by millions of people with itchy wallet fingers. Hold back on investment in technology, and the gap between income and outgoings widens, and Jeff Bezos and my father smile again with a hint of "I told you so"

AMZN up 11.6%

Sorry folks, my Wall Street stock price prediction ability is dodgy to put it mildly. I said before I knew the results that (AMZN) would hit $75 by next week. Wrong! The stock was faster out the gate than any UPS delivery driver on his last drop of the day.

Tags: Amazon

I finally worked out how to use Stumble upon properly via the Firefox extension. StumbleUpon is cool, but not.

I say "Worked out how to use SU" but that is probably putting it a bit strong. Sometimes concepts are too simple to understand first time round, but after an enlightening discovery - hitting the Stumble icon repeatedly and getting results -, Ed is no more the kid outside looking in, bemused, as everyone else has fun. I finally joined the 2.6 million strong hordes who find clicking on "Stumble" to be quite the experience. I also saw the downsides too and begin to get a better idea of what some sharp observers hate about Web 2.0 entities.

How to Stumble

To recap, there is nothing to it, really. Clicking the Stumble icon in your toolbar repeatedly, is like clicking the "Next Blog" button in Blogger blogs. A new blog loads with each click, but the blogs are targeted to your prefences. And to make it a doubly constructive surf through 70 million sites, you are given a thumbs up or thumbs down option to express your opinion of the blogs you have been given to browse.

Behind StumbleUpon

As you could tell from the pictures, the 3 button front end isn't rocket science, but I suspect that the algorithms are pretty cute, seeing that the majority of sites you are presented with really do match your interests.

Getting Stumbled

As for how your blog gets Stumbled - yikes - every time you give a page the thumbs up, it adds some kudos to the article or feature. This glorified vote flies a post higher up the hierarchy of categorised selections offered to the Stumbling masses. Like a virus, the more visitors give a post the thumbs up, the more likely others are shown it and before you know it, the servers are down on the site hosting the Stumbled post! That is all there is to it.

However, there is no point rehashing here what millions already know. StumbleUpon is cool but it also raised some issues in my head, like big red flags.

Easy access to information is good

In theory if a post is well enough written, that should provoke further investigation inside a site. We all like more of the same when our taste buds are salivating, so with the huge array of targeted blogs in their database StumbleUpon have plenty of material for surfers to feast on, delve into and use to improve their minds or laugh or groan at. So SU is good, intrinsically. Maybe!

Theory says that the whole internet in fact is a mine of information to improve man's understanding. Educators rave about the power of internet, the repository of all knowledge.

Well, they used to rave, but now the wise ones rant about how Google search copy and paste has ruined students' ability to write essays of their own. And instead of satisfying an innate curiosity and researching the answers to life when they get home from school, students IM and MySpace their lives away. SU is another example, in my opinion of a good idea that has too many disadvantages to deem it a raving success.

Stumble Upon can breed contempt for content

I think, like most tools and luxuries, familiarity breeds contempt, free is too easy, etc etc. The StumbleUpon ease-of-use opens the mind and reveals different ways of thinking, but then it will reach a point where it gets misused and abused and eventually becomes mindless.

Right now, I think the most conscientious Stumblers scan what they have been given by SU, maybe read that post a little closer, and if it grabs them, hit the thumbs up button - next!

Others maybe maybe take a 30 second cursory trip through the rest of a site, and even less frequently bookmark the page (guaranteeing a one in a thousand chance of one in three visitors ever returning).

In time, it will be a blog race. Scan, tut, (this whole site is crap) Next. Like a blog blur, users will be unleashing StumbleUpon algorithms to do the hard surfing work for them ie hit the Stumble button to once again scan, tut and next your way to glazed eyedom.

Web 2.0 Downside of Stumble Upon

Looking at it bleakly and without a plan to harness the phenomenon, ultimately Stumble Upon would appear as just one more Web 2.0 consumerist throwaway tool, a cool version of a scraper site for the benefit of people who don't blog, who don't create content.

As far as Stumble Upon are concerned, I am not an 800 article blog possibly loaded with ads to generate some revenue to pay for the blog, I am a random single page that is consumed by people with no loyalty to me whatsoever. The visitors read and go, I am left idling in the wake of Stumblers who whizzed through like locusts, taking and not leaving a thing behind, except a spike, temporary bragging rights and a warm server.

SU, this slick guided search for preferred blog types should be a chance for bloggers to impress and attract a new lifelong reader. Unfortunately, if you just blog without realising this particular audience's needs and attitudes, meaningful traffic is a forlorn hope! And worse, you are supplying consumers of SU for SU's benefit, not your own.

The need to harness Stumble Upon

You could say that bloggers only have a few seconds to make an impact, so deal with it. There are differences however between the attention spans and analytical skills of those ambling through a museum and those running full pelt through an amusement park. SU was like a quick junky fix, perfect for further stimulating over-stimulated minds into oblivion. At least that was my experience, judging by the long history of really cool but forgotten 30 second sites I am looking at now in bewilderment. I Stumbled Upon that many sites and I am supposed to do it again tomorrow too??!!

How to harness Stumble upon?

Fortunately, a tool is a tool for good and evil depending on the hands it is in. Just be glad sometimes we can look to the probloggers for guidance on building web traffic, so substitute SU for Digg and you may be on to something.

And if you want to get noticed, make money and / or advertise, check out Profit and Subvert. Very interesting way not to stay a victim of Stumblers!

And of you don't want to be a mad glazed eyed blog rat, take your time and look beyond the first thing on a site to flash before you. Sometimes less is more!

Ed's effort to make his Stumble somewhat meaningful

My favorite discovery was / is this Mini Ajax script directory. Wow, my juices are flowing after looking closely at a few of these. Webmasters should browse and look under leaves (ie don't stumble around mindlessly) and you will see what I mean.

As usual, the goody bag provokes all sorts of dreamy thoughts centered on how you can incorporate the scripts into your blog in a way that adds to the user experience without adding to the clutter. Time to try and streamline social bookmarking buttons per chance?

Make StumbleUpon precious

I suspect Stumbling has already evolved into a mindless flick and charge (read surfing) around the internet for many. It is how people consume these days, but it doesn't make it right. I think Stumbling could be more precious if it were limited! MyBlogLog users have been limited to 15 visits to try and curb this glazed need to visit and say two words to people you will never speak to again.

Rather than do the equivalent of counting stars and saying you own the ones you counted, Stumble could be a gem of a blog discovery session that you appreciate and look forward to. How cool to be cut off from surfing for your own good, knowing you can return 24 hours later for another hit!

Tags: bookmark, Stumbleupon, Firefox, Web 2.0, mini AJAX

Grappling with a fading, pulsating downright irritating internet connection today, how ironic that I am trying to publish a short sharp post related to SpeedMatters!

High speed internet my ass

SpeedMatters have a cool USA-wide test for internet download and upload speeds. Once the fun is over, they offer all sorts of comparisons to perk your interest in the fact that the USA is sooo far behind the rest of the world in matters of internet, it isn't funny.

Seriously, if you are happy with your internet connection, you are being stiffed.

The report showed a national median download speed of a sluggish 1.9 megabits per second (mbps). Compare that to median speeds of 61 mbps in Japan, 45 mbps in South Korea, and 17 mbps in France, and it's clear that the U.S. is falling far behind. Median upload speed in the U.S. was an exceedingly slow 371 kilobits per second.

Their findings are so disturbing, that the organisers have drafted a letter to Congress begging them to make internet accessible to the masses. (Action you can take.)

For instance only a few percent of the 80,000 who took the speed test were on dial up. (I think only people with zippy Comcast connections did the test to feel good about how fast their line is, but who am I to judge?) The scary thing however, is, 40% of all US internet users are actually on dial-up, so the dismal results from the SpeedMatter guys were actually the most optimistically skewed figures could have produced!

I wonder if the asterisks explaining the lop-sided cross-section of testers will be rubbed out by the politicians and when they re-present the info to the public, they will say it isn't half as bad as the lobbyists make out because America has the fastest dial up in the world!

It is the truth that counts.

Bottom line, the SpeedMatters report is an indication that large swathes of rural America are missing out completely on the world wide web. Meanwhile, the rest are rolling along content with their hi-tech status, unaware that they are operating at an expensive snail's pace compared to the impoverished citizens in other nations. Imagine the glee of working in S. Korea or France, screaming through your surfing and on-line work days in triple quick time.

The USA is lagging, according to SpeedMatters, and, any which way you spin it, the internet service is appalling for a developed country touting itself as efficient. Take the test, and do your bit to increase the bytes you can play with on-line. Remember, the French work 35 hour weeks. If you had their internet service, you could go home an hour or three earlier every day!!

Out of interest, leave your results in Comments, and show us what you got!

Tags: Speed matters, download, upload, Comcast

According to the latest ready reckoner from the Business Opportunities website, this blog is worth almost $56,000. The amount is a fictitious one, unless I am mistaken, but it does at least give you a gauge that is enlightening, in a money-grabbing capitalist kind of way. Money talks. Or does it?

Slowly does it

Wouldn't you rather have a website with 56,000 daily visitors and no income? Yes, if it were a blog, I would! Because with that much traffic, I would have a sound base from which to monetize the site at any time in the future. The John Chow character currently with all the readers in the world waited till he had a ton of traffic before he started to add in ads and nonsense paying posts and all sorts of revenue generators. Viola, as the illiterate Frenchman said, he built up his income to $10 or $12k per month and still his readership grows. Opportunistic and successful with it, he invested in his high readership stats and made them pay.

You need to act fast sometimes

Another smart guy (sorry I can't find the post!) came up with an idea for a site, but he wasn't so lucky with the money-making angle. He put his single page of digital genius online and attracted 40,000 visitors in no time. He was frantically asking around for advice on how to monetize his site, but by the time he took the decision to place a single Adsense block above the sole piece of info on the web page, the novelty wore off, numbers plummeted and he lost out.

Digg is another example of how poor judgement at monetization time can lose you everything - unless you have the luck of the Rose. A few months ago, Digg were offered $100m to sell. The founders were like tongues hanging out saying Yes, yes, Yes. The board said No, they wanted $150m. Apart from the adrenalin rush coming to nothing, it seemed like no big issue at the time. Their pay day was assured at some time in the future.

However, when that fiasco blew up over a set of HD-DVD encoding numbers, Digg teetered on the brink of losing everything. What would the management have said had the legal eagles nailed their ass to a post and that pay day had been buried forever? Gulp! Open another beer, and let's vodcast, probably

On balance

As editor of the Pisstakers, I would rather have the traffic and then generate revenue as subtly and fairly as possible, ie ensure that the readers who built the site up, don't get hammered with a poorer blogging experience. And if the monthly numbers are sufficiently ritzy then I am sure some enterprising so-and-so will make me an offer in order to ride on the coat tails of my success.

Relax, I am definitely open to offers. A one-off payment would do me fine. Somewhere in the region of $2.2m, my desired sell out price and guaranteed to keep me blogging for a few years yet!!

Tags: business opportunities, John Chow, Digg

Jeremy Fain's blog, Tech It Easy is a good example of guest blogging put to good use. One of his international co-writers, Vincent, a Dutchman writing in his native language of better English than me, penned a quick round-up of interviews featuring the top IT CEO's and their thoughts on leadership. I couldn't resist.

Andy Grove

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Looking at the Intel guru he seeemed to have a great face for audio podcasting, and no wonder the slogan was Intel inside. He hasn't worn well and should stay deep inside a building, locked away from the cameras, only to come out for radio interviews and in absentia award ceremonies.

Jeff Bezos

This guy is wasted at Amazon, he should be on the stage with his 2 to 4 hour comedy routine. He had me laughing with his hyena-like enthusiasm about bizarrely named Mechanical Turk and Elastic Compute Cloud services. Sounds like a Belgian punk rock band? The Arrington analogy to the Matrix was hysterical too. Good one - mwahahahhahaaha.

Eric Schmidt

He blew the lid on running Google. It blew me away too to see that not only are 3 heads better than one, but the triumvirate of leaders at Google (is that tautological?) has actually morphed into one most important person. That is a stellar way to create a good leader and proof that at Google, anything is possible.

Reid Hoffman

He is clearly a great leader. Is his motto, Follow me, or I will eat you for my second lunch? Just a thought after seeing his bio pic.

The original Tech It easy article is full of more useful links. Merci beaucoup, have a bon jour, and blog on.

Tags: Tech IT Easy, Jeremy Fain, Andy Grove, Jeff Bezos, Eric Schmidt, Reid Hoffman

On a lighter tech note, loosen up a bit with the Willy Name Generator from Generator Land! Click and flip through dozens of belly laugh names for the magnificent male appendage filling your boxers, boys! And ladies, find something to adequately describe and jolly along that thing you have been putting up with since the honeymoon ended.

Ed was getting all giddy with thoughts of firing off a Trouser Bazooka, and then almost fainted when Mrs Ed revealed she had been asked out on a date with Admiral Slippery Bat.

I couldn't help but think that Lord Likely was the originator of Sir Quiver Bone, but we may never know, unless Botter has some beans to spill once he has cleaned himself up?

And I couldn't help wondering if the diminutive Peter, master philosophical blogger at Necessary Skills, is in fact the Pocket Dolphin, billed to appear next Saturday night at some Canadian male revue. Perhaps he could get back to us on that and if it is him, we may brave a full body search at Customs and pop into Canada for a laugh.

I could go on, but I don't want to put words in anyone's mouth, Euh, sorry about that imagery. See anything you like? There are loads of other random generators too, if you feel uncomfortable looking through the guest lists at the Dr One-Eyed Club.

Tags: Generator, Lord Likely, Random Generators

It is quite easy to hide behind anonymity, but it doesn't hurt to be polite on-line. And if you can't be polite, at least be gracious. Here are a few rudenesses that I have noticed on the internet.

ALL CAPs is a pretty rude way to address someone online, as is F... this f... that on a forum or site you haven't commented on before.

Racial remarks, hate and personal attacks are a no-no too. Did you hear of the nasty episode involving a speaker called Kathy Sierra

Spamming isn't exactly polite either , and off-topic remarks can verge on rude at times.

Mis-spelling someone's name is a faux pas to avoid (sorry Barry Hnetka) as is revealing someone's personal details to the world.

Ignoring emails When you go to quite a lot of trouble to write someone an email, to be nice, and they never acknowledge you in the smallest way. That is rude, especially when you are in their address book!

Ed's personal irritants with comments

There are a couple of comment-related things that really irritate the fricking HELL out of my ugly white ignorant hetero honky protestant ass currently located at IP adress 76.345.274.

Ignoring comments

Firstly, leaving comments that never ever get an answer or so much as a by your leave. Turn off comments if you don't reply to anything! If I sound hypocritical to anyone who thinks I haven't replied to their comment, that is blindness on my part, not ignorance, as I check the comments summary every day and do my utmost to acknowledge you all in some way.

Password protecting comments

How annoying is to go out your way to leave a comment and then you have to work out some captcha crap, or make out some contrived code of hidden letters or add 2 plus 2. I don't know what spam filters the commenting systems for Blogger and Wordpress use, or how much spam you guys get, but can we all please play fair and have the filtration work done by the same robots that haloscan use behind the scenes? No passwords or hoops to jump through at the front end, just comment and send.

I will probably be spammed off the planet tomorrow, but, honestly, not one single spam comment yet. Just wish my Pisstakers email filter was as efficient.

So, now that is off my chest, what online mal etiquette irritates you?

Tags: online etiquette, Spam, Comments, Email

After receiving an email from WMDTalk, a site I reviewed some time ago, I got to thinking about video and music piracy. Trae now offers links to major movies for your online pleasure. I am duty bound to point out that this is not illegal because the movies are hosted in Denmark. So that is alright then.

Piracy is theft

I think the main reason that people rationalise stealing as "borrowing" or "sampling" is actually their response to the stance of a bunch of numb skulls in the video and movie industry. If you read the Motion Picture Association of America website, it makes for some interesting and sad reading that is so black and white as to be almost laughable, and no wonder people are circumventing their rules.

Who are the pirates under scrutiny?

This isn't aimed at major mobs who get hold of the master tapes before they leave Hollywood. I am talking piracy involving normal people. The MPAA website and people on the piracy trail offer plenty enough fertile pickings for a pisstaker who, by nature, mocks the behavior of people who say one thing and do another, or make a stance that is so full of holes you could drive a truck through it. (This is why I make fun of my imperfect self too, just to be fair.)

To the pirates I say

I am totally against stealing. Crazy as it sounds, I feel I have to say this, because many people of a certain generation think that stealing, when couched in other terms, and applied to online activities, isn't particularly wrong. I suggest that most people have never created anything worth stealing, so they don't get it!

So, my main gripe, irrational maybe, is that 99% of "pirates" have not an ounce of movie-making creativity in their own soul yet they dare take the work of someone who has spent years and millions making something from nothing, and take ownership of the DVD as though it were their own.

Call it a quirk of old age, whatever, but I try to see things from both sides. For instance, I know for sure that if I played truant, then made a copy of a student's school notes and said I was borrowing them to see how they worked out for me before I copied them and used them as my own, the ripped off student would be anything from indignant to pissed off. Is watching a pirated DVD any different?

Of course the student would say "Yes! When I watch (or copy) a DVD, I have no intention of selling it, or making a movie using the excerpts or doing anything except watch it. It is for personal use."

And then of course, the creative person in me would get totally cruel and say that me taking his notes and him taking a DVD copy is exactly the same, because neither would I do anything with his notes with commercial intent, but I still want to have his notes as my own to read and entertain me. (Not to do anything with them, just to have them, taking them for the hell of having them on my shelf is plain vindictive, and that isn't nice either!)

And anyway, maybe I wouldn't do anything with his notes, but the truant mate of mine who I gave them to might re hash them, and sell them to classmates... (I know a university professor who sold his notes to students, so it isn't too far-fetched a proposition!)

When is copying OK, according to Ed's own black and white stance?

If you already own a full copy and wanted to make a back-up, then at last, we are entering the constructive side of copying. And if you were doing research to see if you wanted to add to a paid-for collection, then at last we can look to the movie industry to stand up and move the debate forward.

MPAA are causing many issues related to piracy

I am not an unfair pisstaker and am not down on people for the sake of it. I need to point out, however, that the MPAA are a bunch of dinosaurs who have backed progress and piracy into a corner. For a start, they say that studentss with little world experience act against the law, (which is true) whilst making out that the entertainment industry is a pure entity operating on a level playing field (which they aren't.) They have ripped off so many individuals in the course of their history it is embarrassing that they stand for anything ethical. Every penny invested in movies has come from a legitimate source, every contract has been fair to both parties? Right! They have tried to prosecute politicians for downloading stuff?

Grow the number of collectors via "preview piracy"

And the really stupid thing about their piracy is theft stance is that the online world offers the film industry endless opportunities for massive additional incomes, if only they could think outside their ivory tower and embrace change instead of fight it.

For instance, one of the students' justifications for taking a copy is to preview something before buying. That is a bollocks argument for most, but a small percentage actually do that, you know. There are folks with collections worth thousands, and the availability of free previews on Limewire gives them a chance to view more, and get suckered into owning more. Admittedly that small percentage of modern day collectors was also small pre-piracy, probably smaller than today in fact, but the MPAA are thick not to recognise the chance to grow that collector base by miles using creative use of previews.

Unfortunately, the movie people delight in quoting the truth - People wouldn't buy more just because of free previews of pirated movies. Correct. But they only see the "preview" model against a backdrop of DVDs at their current prohibitive price level. What the MPAA fail to embrace is that if they made full movie previews easily available and dropped the price of a DVD, and maybe played around with resolution quality options, then shock horror, the barriers to entry would drop and millions more people would probably start collecting. Oooh, 3 things at once!

That is some food for thought. There is also the flat-rate download all the digital you can for $50 a year option, but that is too big a step, I fear....

A final twist

Here is another piece of sadness. When I said students, that implies young people, but I also include the following demographic - people old enough to be parents who were interviewed in the Indicare project

• PC-freaks (high computer proficiency, high level of illegal copying; 10,3 % of the sample; average age 25);
• hobby-users (low computer proficiency, high level of illegal copying, 33,6 % of the sample; average age 29);
• pragmatists (low computer proficiency, low level of illegal copying, 49,5 % of the sample; average age 34);
• PC-professionals (high computer proficiency, very low level of illegal copying, 6,5 % of the sample; average age 38).

Tags: wmdtalk, piracy, movies, download

Mention Adsense and you get different reactions depending on which side of the blog fence you sit.

Bloggers attitude to adsense

Bloggers are looking for ways to monetize their material and one of the first ports of call is Google. They are the biggest fish in the pond. On their Adsense journey, bloggers may think any of the following:

Adsense will make me loads of money now.

According to money making guru John Chow, he makes 10% of his $12k monthly revenue from Google Adsense. I also read of people making 50 cents a month, or nothing. Obviously, your mileage may vary as to whether Adsense brings you riches, or not. The key is, if you have a big readership, Adsense should earn you some money.

Hassle incorporating the code

Google Adsense code is based on Javascript. For WordPress users, apparently, a break tag is automatically added to every line of code you paste into a template, causing issues. It is the same with my software, Rapidweaver, and probably in others that I don't know about, (maybe you do?) Anyway, the options for Wordpress users are: to work some code monkey magic, or do as Steve did on his tech blog and use a special plug-in Adsense Deluxe.

Rapidweaver users should highlight any Adsense code included in a post and press Cmd full stop. What others do, I don't know. Either way, it isn't that simple a job to incorporate the Google code into your blog on a whim, although it is getting easier.

Design challenges to incorporate Adsense into a theme

Hands up if your blogging theme was specifically designed with advertisements in mind? The majority of theme designers seem to just assume that the blogger will work out a style and placement of Adsense ads once the theme is up and running. This reliance on non-designer input at the critical stage of ad placements must explain the dire state of the many blogs peppered with tasteless commercial Adsense crap.

I have to say this aspect of theme design is where the Pisstakers designer, Bonsai Studio, deserves a huge round of applause. The Rapidweaver theme was practically built around that one looping ad space that you see under the left side navigation bar. (Interestingly, it was not designed to incorporate Adsense ads, but that's for another point.)

Readers attitude to Adsense

I am a reader too, and I have a different Adsense oriented perspective to a blogger when I surf.

Euh, commercial ugly Adsense interfering with my reading time.

I go to a site that seems to have some good posts waiting for me. Bingo, shite! The first thing I have to do is process the fact that there is text that has nothing to with the title of the post, right there in my line of vision. Or, in many atrocious instances, the only text you see above the fold is a bank of Adsense ads, and you have to scroll down to start reading any content. Get out of here, loser blogger, next thought.

Euh, this blogger is trying to "make" me click away from this site

I have noticed that some bloggers don't want sticky content ie they don't want people to stay, but to click on ads. Fair enough, Adsense is your friend. But if you want curious and committed readers, be more judicious.

Oh, that's an interesting product in that list of ads, let me find out.

At last, a positive thought about Adsense. Man, I was really thinking about investigating a nose hair plucker, thanks blogger, here it is, and now I can leave your site and find out all about this amazing product. That is a positive, at last.

Conclusion

Basically, my take on Adsense is - use it in huge moderation.

And what is it with gurus on Adsense who advocate you use a layout where between 40% and 100% of viewers' first sight of your homepage is Adsense, and then woo you with the research that they get 10% of their income from those ads! Dumb advice, surely. For a 10% return you give Adsense 10% of your theme real estate, or if that space allocation won't get you 10% of your income return, advise people to not think so highly of the efficiency and usefulness of Google Adsense.

I know The Pisstakers won't ever be an Adsense whore, I don't have the space, for one. For two, I am learning that there are so many other ways to generate an income without stimulating so many negatives from readers. Think before you Adsense. What do you guys think of Adsense?

Tags: Google, Adsense

Talk about a storm in a coffee pot. Silly fellow, John Chow dot com mogul, has decided he is going to nickel and dime some of his readers with a $10 a month comments oriented scheme. He is offering commenters a backlink to his site via a Do Follow applied to any comments they leave on his site. Woo hoo say some, boo say I, wtf is a Do Follow, say many.

What's a Do Follow, dude?

By default, Wordpress and many other commenting systems tell Google not to make a big deal of the links that commenters create with their names when they leave a comment ie the in-built coding says, Google, No Follow Ed, man! On the other hand, Do Follow unleashes the beast and advises Google to do something constructive with the link.

Woo hoo is what you hear from the bloggers who think it is cool to get a link to a PR6 site just for leaving a comment plus $10 in John Chow's piggy bank. And for his part, John Chow is probably thinking $10 x a large proportion of 5000 subscribers hmmmmm. $$$$$$$$. I say boo, though, along with a few others, and here is why.

Do Follow craps on content

I don't have a crystal ball, but if I, or you, were to advertise, "For $10 a month, post comments all over this high PR site and get a backlink every time." what would happen? Most likely scenario is, instantly a certain pool of not quite tech savvy people would go mad and trawl through my every old post leaving remarks like, "Cool, nice blog, I agree, You're a twat etc etc."

There are a couple of quick points worth making, methinks!! Content is king, and bulk commenting schemes produce crap content. Readers, as well as Google will read crap comments and make up their own mind about the quality. Net result for all concerned in the long term - not good!! The long story follows:

Look at Do Follow from a Google standpoint

While the demented ones are wasting their lives commenting inanely in the hope of getting loads of link love, it is highly debatable that Google would think very highly of their comments.

Certainly a Do Follow link is going to be better (in theory) than a No Follow link , so the $10 deal appears to have a positive side, but...

But, indeed! As far as Google is concerned, compared to links in the body of a real post, these comment-based links hold marginal value from the outset. Worse than that, from a Google perspective at least, the more comments-based links (or any links for that matter) populating a page, the less value each link has. The $10 link love scheme encourages lots of people to leave lots of links, so you know the dilution process on any page is going to be major.

It also gets worse. The idea that you have a link on John Chow's homepage because you paid $10 and commented on a front page article, is false - as far as Google is concerned. Within a couple of days, the article drops off the homepage, and it loses its homepage PR. It is how it works. That article fights for its own popularity level as a standalone page. The post's new PR will invariably be less popular than the homepage that attracted you to the DoFollow offer. In the blink of a $10 transaction, your link love payback on the back of a comment binge will be majorly diluted.

Google logic, therefore, says your return on $10 a month "investment" has almost no lasting value, and the more pointless link-grabbing comments you leave, the worse it gets.

Look at Do Follow from a site owner's standpoint

To be honest, $10 x a few thousand sounds nice, but I don't think that the return is worthwhile compensation for the repercussions of a drop in the entertainment value of a site built with long term gain in mind.

If you assume that comments are a part and parcel of the overall content of the site, you want to encourage the highest quality comments to keep rolling in. Some of the best remarks made on the Pisstakers are to be found in the comments section, so I wouldn't want to dilute their quality. But, if I gave a green light to you to spam the comments section, that part of the site would turn to rat's poo and I would expect a few readers to start complaining, "Hey Ed, your comments (ie an important part of your content) are shit, we arent commenting any more and certainly aren't reading them either." This isn't a great scenario!

Most blogs depend on a relationship, a sense of community and discussion. This is where comments play a major role in the success of a blog. John Chow is expecting advantages from a proliferation of crap content? If that is a good strategy, please don't show me a bad one, buddy. Or maybe it is all a pisstaker post ?

John Chow is expanding on a bad idea of his!

It could be argued that my pessimistic Do Follow for cash forecast is based purely on what I think would happen if I applied this Do Follow policy on my 200 uniques a day site. On that basis, sure, mine is not necessarily an accurate forecast of the scenario on John Chow's 4000 uniques a day site. I say otherwise, because the evidence I based my assumption on is from what I see on John Chow's own site. This Do Follow deal of his is based on an idea he already has in place, and it ain't that great at all!

His current Do Follow plan

To be fair, his comments section is generally vibrant and the quality of many commenters is quite good, but that is only half the story! His comments boxes are already peppered with crap, thanks to a scheme that encourages commenters to strive for Top 10 Commenter status each month. ie If you leave loads of comments, you will get one of these same Do Follow links that I am talking about now with the $10 scheme. People are leaving 100 comments a month. Feel the quality - not!

Can a variation on this comments-based theme (times 10) really improve the quality of comments / the quality of his site content / the chance of attracting more readers? I think not.

John Chow may well retract his latest experiment as another bad, sorry, "evil" idea and will carry on as before. But he may not, and certainly lots of bloggers will be tempted to give him $10 just to see what happens.

Fans of his may say I am missing the point and it is all about the numbers game ie he is evil, always pushing the envelope and the figures show his earnings are constantly rising, regardless of experiments. Maybe, but he hasn't tried charging like this before!

But maybe John Chow thinks that with such a big readership in place, eating his every word, he can get away with subtly worsening the content? Good luck trying to mask the mass of crap coming his way. The skewed mix of sponsored posts and real content is already attracting adverse comments, but hey, income is up so who cares!!

Do Follow or No Follow, that is the final question

To reiterate, the evidence isn't great if you expect appealing comments (ie more new reader bait) to rise from incentives to mass comment.

As a blog owner offering the Do Follow service correctly, ie as part of your friendly helping hand to people who contribute a realistic number of meaningful comments to your site, go for it. It is a good use of the tool.

As a blog owner offering this type of inverted cash for comments strategy to readers, I would reflect and quickly draft a backtrack post - sorry this was a bad experiment , we are stopping it / radically over-hauling it now. Of course I could be a greedy short termist dummy, take the $10 now and pray I can blag my way out of it once I have earned a few bucks.

And finally, as a site visitor contemplating handing over $10 to spam comments boxes galore, I suggest you act like a wise fellow and do not follow the DO Follow for $10 scheme. Put your $10 away and spend 5 minutes answering my Blog Interrogation - an easier and far more constructive way to create content and gain some readership. Or write a post on your own site that others find worth linking to. Anything but inane comments on someone else's site. Proper content is king!

And thanks to Phishie for alerting me to this original story. His is almost the sole external link on this page so far. Almost pure link love, man.

Tags: blogging, Wordpress, Comments

According to the rules of the game, you can have between 1 and 63 letters and/or digits in a domain name. Well, you never could have 1 number and now you can't have 1 letter either , because the rules have been evolving.

Keep on reading, dude

Tags: domain name, Guinness

It is all happening over at Web Analytics World, the hotbed for anything web and analytical.

Manoj is running a competition / carnival / interesting series of articles entitled The Future of Web Search marketing. The topic is set but the content and angle of articles is as open as the future of search itself.

The challenge seems to have loosened up a few writers, whose average post looks long. Interesting and thought provoking, to say the least.

The Thinking Blog

Ilker Yoldas has come up with an expansive look at the application of search in the future. Web 3.0 is not too far around the corner and it had better not be too similar to Web 2.0, unless the developers and driving forces behind it want to be labeled opportunist marketers.

The problem is, we users already need a lot of help making sense of the welter of data out there, and as the digital mayhem spreads, data search isn't going to get any easier over time. In fact it is going to get ugly, which means an increase in opportunities for search marketers. Solutions will require some out-the-box and novel approaches to web search - not more of the same, and although AI is not round the next corner, it isn't too many bends away. His article

The Idea Is

Shay Rosen looks deep, and I mean deep into the crux of search - algorithms. In his article entitled, The future of search marketing LSA on Search History he says algorithms are a bit dumb at the moment and are missing out on millions of opportunities. For the sake of a little more imagination and less rigidity, he argues that engines could propose ads and links to encourage users into a click or purchase when they least expect it.

He is not saying spam or trick users into buying what they don't want. It is cleverer than that. The search engines should be able to remind users about products they have been thinking about in general, but weren't thinking about right at that particular moment. Shane explains it well, I think. His article

SEO Space

Jody Nimetz runs through the A to Z of web search in the future. This is very indepth and although a little bit contrived, there are loads of smart observations and predictions. From ASK online communities, to blogging as the mainstay of search engine ranking, to Firefox as dominant browser (easy prediction!) he moves onto G for Google of course. He predicts they will be forever dominant, joining Yahoo to protect themselves from a monopolies law suit (which sounds the reverse of what would have to happen?) And then we see an idea that Joost will be the Google conduit for consumer-driven TV programing, before the article whizzes through the alphabet to Z, several Z's in fact.

He ends with quite a poignant remark, that Man will be searching long after Google fizzles and dies. Search is in our nature. Amen to that. His article

The Pisstakers

And somehow, Ed got in by donning his sensible, slightly ranty hat and proposed that Google will be the main tool of search, regardless of what people like, think, or want. As main search engine to the internet, the Googloids will also be the thread throughout web search marketing. Live with it, they aren't all bad, you know. Google have environmentally friendly power for their servers, they are creative and they aren't called Microsoft.

(And it just occurred to me, that the search marketing world needs a main dominant player. Just look at the mess that is free-for-all US internet service provision, compared to say, Japan, where central bodies make sure that internet service provision stays focussed. In the US you are lucky to get above 2Mb/sec, in Japan, they are uploading at 50Mb/sec!

Working on that analogy, the world doesn't need Google to have too many competitors, unless we want to hobble search marketing on the basis of some outdated principle that believes that competition, no matter how damaging, is good.) The article

Tags: Google, Web 2.0, Shay Rosen, Ilker Yoldas

What has search got to do with humor? Nothing per se, but it has lots to with visitors to a humor blog, and bloggers too.

As the complexity and sheer volume of the internet develops, info bogs down blogs and search becomes an ever important button. Your visitors will often be asking themselves these questions. Where the hell was that post on Indian restaurant hijackers? Do they have a post on Mongoose DNA? And you probably ask the same questions too when writing. How do you find out quickly? You go and search.

Search beyond Google

Once you get past Google, which is still The Pisstakers best in-house search tool, a whole new world opens up. However, rather than re-hash the wonders of Winzy, Swicki and Technorati, take a look at a series of quite sensible posts on web search that I have been developing away from readers but in sight of search engines. There are plenty of options for speedy, focussed or paying search tools that can be incorporated into a blog and hopefully I make a bit of sense of what is out there..

As it happens, this post was prompted by a trip through The Pisstakers Swicki where I am reminded every morning of search keywords that I could write a new definition for. Unlike Bobbarama who would have a field day adding to his DictioWary, Swicki request sensible definitions from me. I can't stoop so low, but if you want to beautify the web with a few words on the following, be my guest.

Dirty jokes and pics, convert Pantone ral 1925c and boring old clean jokes - just a sample from yesterday's 40 keyword searches on The Pisstakers Swicki!

Tags: Swicki, Google

I was looking through a webmaster forum and people were looking for yet more bloody stats counters. As if Google Analytics, and Crazy Egg, Awstats, Technorati, Alexa and Blog Juice and the rest of the unusual suspects aren't enough. Anyway, this freebie logger was recommended so I copied and pasted the code and came up with the widget below.


What made me smile though was the warning that came with it. Initially quite business-like, it soon deteriorates.

Note: If you alter the code above your account will be disabled or we may show ads on your site or a big image that tells everyone you have stolen this counter or we will call you names and take away your birthday.

I changed the font size.

free web counter

Will they call me names? Like Pisstaker, maybe?

Tags: Google, Technorati, stats

Mike, who is on a mission to make money online, knows a thing or three about business scams. As a former pen pal scheme schemer he must have learnt of a few tricks on the way. I emphasize OF because he wears a suit and tie and looks like the sort of guy who would rather give his grandma away for nothing than sell her for ill-gotten gains.

Don't tinker with Wealth Toolbox

Anyway, enough of the character assassination, Mike has a thing going against Wealth Toolbox, a business opportunity that he sees as a total scam.

Delving deep into the small print, Mike has made quite a case, and begrudgingly digs up the dirt on the company at every opportunity. Well, at least 5 times since he started blogging. For a better description than I could ever dream up with, read more of Mike's gems on how to spot and avoid Wealth Toolbox and Ponzi schemes

Agloco

This is another business opportunity that I have to tread carefully over, before stamping it into the dirt. Apologies for that emotional outburst, but I can't resist the urge. I am also about to further denigrate the Agloco wholesomeness, by questioning the potential for gain for entrepreneurs like Steve Yu and, to name but 2, Hfdzli, who told me in an exclusive interview on April 17.

I think agloco is not a scam ... I am 100% in support of them. I believe this program will be a success in just a matter of time.

...I know that the viewbar is still in progress. The Shanghai team are working 24/7 to make sure that the viewbar is working fine. And I believe that it will be released before end of this month.

The exuberance of youth is a wonderful thing, till it is quashed by on-line scams!

Paid to surf sounds nice and if you run the numbers, it is in theory a viable business model. So where is the scam, you ask? Well, where do I start?

A waste of human life

There has been an inordinate amount of pro-Agloco view bar promotion energy expended, and for months now it that has been hovering in limbo, awaiting the big release. This situation represents a scandalous waste of resources. Imagine if all that brain power and effort to enlist users had been put to good use, we could have all retired to Utopia by now.

Smoke and mirrors are damaging to the health too. Agloco Delusional Syndrome is being diagnosed in huge numbers. Not to be confused with a different ailment! If you feel happy then sad then resigned to surfing for zero income, as before, then you have Agloco Deficiency Syndrome. Treat it now with a dose of resignation to reality.

Consequences of being late

If the view bar comes, it is going to be such a late starter that it will face unbearable competition. Like pirhanas at feeding time - minus the feed - any number of enterprising internet gurus will poach their signed-up Agloco users and transfer them to a paid-to-surf program of their own. Sorry to plant seeds of dissent and scamability in weak minds, but in this day and age, if you don't act fast, you get swallowed by predators. Ask Hugh Grant.

Will Agloco tool bar ever come?

Perhaps of more interest to readers is the answer to the question, what if it never does arrive, what damage can we cause to the Agloco team? I am sure Shanghai has a few dodgy alleys and a supply of Made in China baseball bats you can borrow.

And if Agloco does appear in a timely fashion?

I will eat crow before reveling in the irony that only the top of the pyramid will do anything financially, while the rest of them brag about their $5 a quarter pay checks. Did I say pyramid, sorry I meant MLM, I meant ------

But not us, we won't suffer humiliation. We can enjoy the judgment call based on no desire to pimp out my browser with horrible green logos.

There is a whole tirade against Agloco if you want more!!

And finally

Is this is a semi clever variation on the 419 Nigerian scam? Bottom line is, I will gladly accept money from them (or in this case their customers) and send the scammers the difference, but if they pay me and then I pay them back the total minus my commission, then no thanks.

Any takers should contact the gentleman below.

Dear sir/madam,

My names are LI CHEN,chief executive officer for Delixi Group of companies . We deal on Electrical appliances and export into the Canada/America,Austrailia New Zealand and Europe. We are in need of representatives/book keeper who will help us establish a medium of getting to our customers in the Canada/America New Zealand, Australia and Europe as well as making payments through you to us.

Please if you are interested in transacting business with us we will be glad. Please contact us for more information,Subject to your satisfaction you will be given the opportunity to negotiate your mode of which we will pay for your services as our representative in canada/America and Europe.

Please if you are interested, forward to us your phone number/fax and your full contact addresses to the email address below: ceo_delixi2a@yahoo.co.uk

Thanks in advance, Mr.Li Chen

Tags: business opportunities, 419 scam

According to a straightforward crystal clear article from Techboggle, the Digg mob has actually done some good and forced the management to re-post a story that HD DVD, one of the Digg sponsors, disapproved of. How refreshing that so many teenage geek freaks actually got their heads out their asses and did some good for free speech - for once. Ouch.

Digg provoked usual on-line nonsense

In case you don't know, Digg is a killer idea for a social news site - let the readers decide what is or isn't newsworthy regardless of the credentials of the source. Vote it up, digg it down blah blah.

As usual, after reaching mega star status with millions of hits a month, a sector of the masses started to taint the dream. 15 year old Diggers took to hunting in packs, burying targetted bloggers regardless of the quality of posts; racking up some shammy status of their own as big Diggers, claiming to be important when they weren't. The usual adolescent behavior and to my mind, as an older fart, highly irritating. But oh well, they probably spend more money than me at Digg, so who am I!

The HD DVD key that changed the world

What is happening now at Digg? Initially the Digg nuts went nuts posting a single line of numbers that holds the key to decrypting the HD-DVD’s made before April 23, 2007 Woo hoo, something for free again - losers. The manufacturer wanted none of it and ordered Digg to remove the posts. Digg did.

It seems like the kids came good, though,and hats off to them for changing the world for the better, combining their democratic votes to reverse the fall-out of blatant censorship by a sponsor. Kevin Rose, Digg head honcho, re-considered his decision under the welter of protest and let the world post whatever they saw fit on this topic.

Fallout at Digg?

Some say that Digg may be going down fighting, seeing as they need sponsorship to make their business model work, and they are killing future business relationships by blatantly disregarding the wishes of a current sponsor. Maybe, maybe not.

Bob meets World makes a good point, though, that users not sponsors made Digg what it is, which indicates to me that maybe Digg per se wouldn't die, but their relationship with this particular sponsor will.

But, then there appears this Allsux post that throws more fuel on the fire and it don't sound good. Peering at the small print, I think it is saying that Digg's relationship with HD DVD will experience a high definition death and probably once the HD DVD lawyers have finished with their ass, Digg as a whole will die, regardless of how many sponsors say they are cool with running the gauntlet of the masses.

Pisstakers solution to managing the Digg drama

I reckon Digg should re-invent themselves retrospectively as a spoof news site - where you can print almost anything with little fear of legal reprisals.

If that doesn't wash, Digg should just ride the wave and announce to all sponsors current and future: You know what they say about publicity, good or bad, it gets you hits. Also, remind sponsors that they shouldn't affiliate themselves with a breaking news site if they don't want breaking news to appear on it. It is like supporting a Pepsi campaign and then racking them because their product rotted your kid's teeth.

And once Digg have suckered up, then, send HD DVD a few million bucks of venture capital money set aside for development. Just tell investors that sometimes you have to go backwards before you can go forwards!

Kevin Rose needs some gummi bears

The messengers, Digg, may be shot by these sponsors, but I will sponsor them to the tune of 1lb of gummi bears a week, if anyone would care to break the secret key to winning MyBlogLog Sunday. Publish this critical info on Digg, in fact anywhere you like (with a link back to Digg) and get Kevin Rose some free consolation candy. Not that it will ever happen, seeing as my top Digg score has been about 9.

Tags: blogging, Digg

A little while ago, I mentioned an article in the Register, saying that Indian students had their internet access turned off for 90 minutes a night - and they weren't happy. The reason for this invasion of human rights? The Dean was really worried that his kids had lost the will to socialise. The cheek of it, assuming that the internet has spoiled the art of conversation. Wasn't that TV's legacy?

Getting around rules

In an effort to prove that they weren't socially dysfunctional, Indian students resorted to downloading movies to carry them through the 90 minute down-time. That's the spirit. No live internet, just the bottled version. Rest easy Dean and students, the addiction has been beaten.

A bit like "No Gas Day". Convince yourselves that by delaying your purchase of gas by 24 hours, you are saving the planet, then carry on polluting with a clear conscience!

Got any other examples of rule-bending that highlights an issue rather than diminishes it?

btw, if you are looking for any growing English-speaking markets for your blog, check out India and friends of Hamrash. But make sure you target your articles at under-25's with no life and an interest in Bollywood films!!

Tags: movies, download, India

According to Techboggle, scientists have broken the internet speed record, previously set at 7.67 Gbps. What this means to the average Joe is - nothing, yet. For Tokyo inhabitants, it means they can brag about a scientist with the ability to download Lord of the Rings within a few seconds.

Science, one step forward, 2 back

The downside to this advance is that we now need a scientist to invent a kettle that will instant heat the water for the coffee you were going to make before you sat down to watch the movie.

If a cold drink is your beverage of choice with a good ole film, then we suggest investing in a flask of nitrogen. This isn't recommended for cooling the drink, but for powering the cooling system required to stop the downloading cables in the back of your computer from heating the ambient temperature of the room to a point where the ice in your Pepsi or mai tai melts.

Any more envisaged side effects to mega fast download speeds are most welcome.

And if you want to know how badly a US internet connection sucks, try this test.

Tags: Speed matters

The word on the street is that you should research keywords that appear on Google, then target your posts in that direction. Fair enough, so according to the correct mode of research, expect to see articles on ass linking. I don't think so! Given the huge influence of the Googloids, you do need to take them seriously, normally, but they aren't the only web search tool with keywords passing through their fingers.

The Pisstakers Swicki

We have a Swicki, a cross between google and wikipedia, which generates about 40 searches a day. Wow wee you may say, but hey, the searches are done from our site and relate to articles on the Pisstakers. So that makes the Swicki pretty valuable in its own minor but targeted way.

Analysing the results brought to us daily by Swicki robots, you can expect to see some articles on Rubens tube, Dave Barnes, the scintillating Scion and Snapvine, the most under-used commenting system on the Pisstakers!

What is the weirdest search keyword you have seen on your site. Are we there yet? had a few.

Tags: Google, keywords, keyphrase, Swicki

A while back I visited Harry Hnetka's humor site and he posted a widget that shows how popular his blog is. I felt degraded in comparison to the impressive score on Hmmm's medal. I had to console myself with the fact that he is a witty guy with a lot of SEO under his belt, so he deserves to shine.



And then I was perusing another amusing blog, this time from Claire Pitt, who, coincidentally, was simultaneously blogging about our gummi bear contest for MyBlogLog Sunday. On comparing her medal to mine, I realised that a 4.2 makes Claire a BJ goddess, and momentarily my self confidence was dashed.



I got another Blog Juice smack in the popularity nuts, pardon the analogy, when I read how the Blog Juice ranking is arrived at. Talk about holey stats. Technorati ranking + Alexa ranking + Bloglines popularity? + number of inbound links = Blog Juice rating. I am not worried about having such an inadequate amount of juice for blogging, but I am saying...

Alexa relies on a dodgy tool bar used (and manipulated?) exclusively, almost, by webmasters, not real people

Technorati was gamed easily in 2004, & the 2000 bloggers trickery continues

Who are Bloglines and who cares about incoming links?

Bah humbug. Funny and popular people everywhere, enjoy your own 100% pulp, I mean Blog Juice medal, and fellow upstarts, relax!

It has been hard accepting that I languish in the nether regions of the Blog Juice funny heirarchy - but I will survive, maybe. Just throw money, that should console me.

Tags: blogging, MyBlogLog, Technorati, Alexa

No sooner did we write up some info on a new meta search engine called Younanimous, than the developers unanimously decide that you need to know it henceforth as Aftervote. In this case, I dunno, calling a spade a spade sort of explains better what the search engine does, but Younanimous is so cool and so evocative.

What is in a name?

There was an article by Pud (of Adbrite and Fucked Company-Techcrunch April Fool's fame) where he went into the machinations of entrepreneurs tackling product naming. Would Flickr have taken off if it were called Yahoo Online Photos? Probably not. But, then again, I could conjecture that Google Maps may have flown better as Larry's G-spot mapping, or G-Maps. And something as retro as GTRE (G-Topographic representations of earth) could have captured the imagination, had they tried hard enough to market the name! So who knows the answer to names.

Younanimous upgraded into Aftervote

I guess the main thing is to make sure the product works well and offers users a newer, better experience than anyone else has been able to do, so far. No doubt the list of improvements coming into Aftervote, will leave Younanimous in the dust. To name but a handful:

Unanimous name changes may work for them, but I reckon the developers should keep their finger on the pulse and ask more than their mates what rings best as a name tag for their superb meta web search engine. Our original highly out of date summary of Younanimous social web search awaits you here!

Tags: search

If you are on the road and/or away from your computer and you need a dose of The Pisstakers, what do you do?

Don't panic! Just download Opera mini onto your cell phone and enjoy a mobile mini version!! A mini pisstake, as it were.

First impressions

The Pisstakers theme has a shed load of graphics in the full version that you see from your desktop. , so if all the face icons and link code were left in its entirety on a mobile theme, it would take 3 weeks just to get a page up on a cell phone.

Also, some super duper usability experts have criticised the 3 ways to navigate the Pisstakers (left bar, right bar and icons along the top.) For mobile users with a teeny screen, that translates into difficult navigation. Something has to give. But OMG, how do you get rid of all the awkwardness, the slow loading times, and still have a recognizable theme left over? And the expense - is it even worth bothering putting The Pisstakers on a cell phone?

The answer is - No - unless the designer is bright enough to work out speedy navigation and optimize for fast loading times.

Going Pisstaker mobile has focussed the mind. And what a mind Bonsai Giuseppe has!

Navigation

The face icons, therefore, have been replaced by a list of text links, so it is simple to pick a topic and read.

And navigation has been really simplified, with both the side bars easily accessible from the second link down. Wham, 2 clicks and you can find search, contact... cool.

A whole page fits on a cell phone screen

The iPhone surfing abilities were demonstrated by browsing a full page of a newspaper in Safari.

Woo, look how you can move around the page, left, right, up, down, sideways, said Steve.

Der, how dizzy, how dumb! says I.

The whole point of blogs and news sites, including The Pisstakers, is to offer written content that is legible, easily digestible and punctuated by nifty graphics and images. Our readers don't have time to go scrolling around with a joystick like demented helicopter pilots. Another 3 cheers to the designer.

When you open a topic, you get pure humorous and sarcastic content right there, in one easy-to-read column. I was also really impressed to see all the images from the original articles in glorious technicolor, smack bang in the middle of the screen - not even side scrolling required. Put that in your pipe, websites in Safari on a phone!

Any issues?

All in all, it seems to work pretty well (as far as the internet on a phone can work.) But there are a couple of remarks to make.

Maybe the large screen size is to blame, but in my on-line test, the Quick link to content brings the first line of content into view at the bottom of the screen. I expected it to appear at the top. But hey, I am fussy.

And that is it really, with bad stuff.

Thumbs up

Very happy. So if you have a mindset to use the cell phone to access the internet, download Opera mini for free read the instructions and give the mini Pisstakers version a go. Try other sites too, and if they don't look too good, tell 'em to talk to Giuseppe!

Good job, Bonsai, proving that some web designers do have the ability to move seamlessly from desktop to mobile work!

Tags: Opera mini

Call me old fashioned, but isn't the Web 2.0 trend sort of too new to be brushing under the carpet already? I just got the hang of big fonts, rounded corners and Ajax all over the joint and it seems quite useful, social and robust. But in progressive Holland, they are already hosting the Next Web show!

...how new technology, business models, innovation and culture-changes affect the direction of the web and the way we do business. The Conference for web industry thought leaders, leading companies, innovative Startups, visionaries, seed funders and real Web savvies.

The Dutch have a habit of getting in ahead of the curve, but not necessarily setting trends to be proud of. They legalised drugs and became experts in finding that legalisation of heroin doesn't curb heroin abuse. They have great ideas about porn, but they don't have any famous porn stars, and now they are going head on into developing ideas about web 2.0 the old man of tech, before web 2.0 has even reached puberty.

Be careful, participants, you may be signing up for something that sinks you without trace in a blaze of glory.

Calm down, people, take a few moments to just enjoy the moment and relax, instead of laying the foundations for another social experiment that sounds great, but won't necessarily be so. Next!

Tags: Web 2.0

In the world of internet, RSS means Really Simple Syndication. Before you glaze over, all that means is one anonymous click gets you instant notification of updates on your favorite blogs - like The Pisstakers.

What RSS means for visitors to sites

For the average visitor, RSS means if you want an easy way to read everything new written by your favorite writers, it is a good idea to sign up to our RSS feed or any other blogger's feed.

For the info addict RSS means instant hit.

I read of one guy who has 750 feeds that he scans every day... he has a huge furrowed forehead and lots of conversational material for when he leaves his basement.

What RSS means to blog owners

For a blog or website owner, RSS can be crap because our fans may never again see the fantastic theme we spent months and millions designing.

Also every Feed reader seems to have a slightly different way of presenting the information, so our feed may look good in some cases, totally unappealing in others. Oh well! btw, Newsgator or NetNewsWire are pretty damn good feed readers.

Don't rely on RSS for all your news

RSS is basically essential in today's saturated blog world, but there is stuff that RSS readers miss. Like this

And some clever sites don't let you see all their articles via an RSS feed. Or at least, not without paying them some money or supporting them in some practical way. Members of Daring Fireball for instance, see things we don't!

RSS has become another bragging right.

RSS widgets can be encouraging or misleading.

Hey, dude, I have like 346 Feedburner subscribers, and you only have like 7. You're a loser.

Well, my man, I actually have 1000 subscribers to the xml non-Feedburner RSS feed on my site and 7 subscribers to Feedburner. Sounds like Feedburner is the loser round here, marn.

I am not into bragging rights, but I would still like to be able to compile all the subscribers to The Pisstakers and put that number in a widget, but I don't know how. If anyone does, let me know. Thanks.

And if you want to subscribe via the feedburner widget or your news reader, or via Firefox or Safari or IE, please, be our guest - but do call by now and again to the real site.

RSS post inspiration

RSS is a taxing issue Thanks to money making Ja Kel Daily dot com for prompting this post with his own kick up the pants post, advising bloggers like me how to make the best of RSS.

While I am at it, Ja Kel Daily Dot Com eventually wants to make money and is offering to link to blogs reviewing his blog. Check it out, he is one to watch. Hell, he needs to make money to put gas in that car of his.

Social Media Websites in Illustrated Form

READ THE ARTICLE AT DRIVL.COM

Running through the old Net News Wire reader, I found an article on Blog About Your Blog, that took me to The Gospel According to Rhys, which encouraged me to follow my nose to Drivl.com. I'm glad I was such a sleuth so early in the morning because I like Drivl, and this is is a sample of website visualisations I found, in this case, relating to Reddit.



If that tickles your fancy, click on the image for more side swipes at Web 2.0 bastions. Also Rhys is running with the idea and seeks other wannabe cartoonists' impressions.

If you can draw a picture that says, cynical observer of all things serious, wannabe tech head and visionary who is creating a viable blog-based business so he can sail round the world with his wife - that is a visualisation of how I see The Pisstakers. Although, with one rotating banner 106 x 42 , and not a trace of Adsense, the current visual impression is something different, probably!

Seth Godin has built on a foundation of research by others to come up with a top 1000 web 2.0 websites. Google cannot play because they don't let you interact, but they got top spot via Youtube, ahead of the big guns like MySpace, Digg (way down there), Feedburner, Photobucket, kayak.com (travel cost comparison site) and all sorts of social bookmarkers like Reddit, furl, delicious...

It is interesting to see a success being made of something as banal as t-shirt designs at Zazzle, self publishing with LuLu, and even the Alexaholic listing itself, receiving several hundred visitors per million of all the surfers on the internet.

Maybe this list should be called A cross-section of internet users' brains. Seeing as I haven't heard of a fraction of these web 2.0 big hitters, I suppose the cross-section of my Homer peanut brain reflects the number of people who visit The Pisstakers?

Tags: Web 2.0

Slashdot reported a Microsoft patent that will encourage students to view ads, and in return the advertisers will offer subsidized or free computers to schools. Gorilla sushi had an indepth article on the ramifications of face recognition software that will ensure that kids give adverts their undivided attention before starting their on-line day.

They made plenty of good points about the bad side of forced corporate intervention. Worse was the likelihood of schools rolling over to the advertisers' demands to keep kids' faces glued to a screen. How reassuring to have such faith in administrators responsible for setting behavioral standards for future generations.

Personally, I feel sorry for the guys making adverts for an audience that couldn't give a flying fig about their product.

Funny how Viacom waited till Youtube was bought out by a bottomless financial pit before getting assy with the posting of copyrighted material.

Viacom's double hit on Youtube

Maybe Google made promises to Viacom and haven't kept them since taking over the reins at the video host monster site, but even so, $1bn worth of broken promises? And why did Viacom wait till hundreds of millions of views of viacom material had been logged before also asking Youtube for a massive compensation deal into the bargain? Fishy as hell.

Viacom's illogical corporate decisions

I would suggest Viacom reconsider because, lets face it, who the hell logs into viacom to watch videoclips? And how stupid is the Viacom guy who decided to take on all the web hosting fees willingly covered till recently by Youtube? Crazy decisions in the name of control.

If it were Microsoft behind Youtube, I could see Viacom's worries, but Google are surely a decent guardian of so much power. Obviously I have no clue as to the motives of Viacom, and the full story behind Youtube's broken promises is confidential, but...

... it seems to be Viacom the dinosaurs taking on Google, the new and open minded visionary kids on the block. There is only one loser, and it begins with "V".

Tags: Google

I learnt something today after watching a stodgy hour on Washington Today. Pretexting is the illegal acquirement of personal records.

It has been revealed that a financial company has been stealing phone records of 6 members of a trading company that criticised their practices. The violated consumers found out by accident and the errant company had to be subpoena-ed before even admitting that agents had falsely acquired the phone records.

It transpired that these agents ( a woman, no less) had opened a secondary account in the customer's name, by quoting SS numbers and personal details to the telecoms companies. Once in the system, they accessed the customers' main phone records. Amazing, just like a John Grisham movie, except real, and no Tom Cruise character to save the day.

Pretexting question opens up doors on telecoms marketing tactics

The telecoms insist that they don't give out personal phone call info. Maybe, but it is quite revealing to see telecom bosses squirm under very innocent questions. Like, "What is the big deal with marketing to existing customers without using the specific details of phone calls?"

On another occasion, the telecoms spokesman forgot the basic difference between personal customer info and call-related info. It was an unbelievable blooper in his good guy argument, when he said something like, "Why would we market to every customer on our books, when we (can use more personal info) to target a certain sector?

Good answer - not. What he meant to say was, "The telecoms have a job to do, and too much personal privacy of customers just gets in the way of our expansion programs."

How I would use phone call info

If you have a big customer database, you can sell them all sorts. Telecoms therefore have tens of millions of opportunities for extra sales.

A subsidiary of a baby bell suspects that there is a bigger picture hiding behind basic phone account details. On the surface a 2 adult household probably doesn't want their latest Mickey Mouse package, but they know that if they checked personal phone calls more carefully, maybe they would spot that one of the adults has a child-like mind. Make a call to the parent phone company asking for a quick look at the phone bill, and the long slippery slope to riches continues.

Truly, you cannot trust humans seeking profits to do the right thing, unless there is accountability. And even with all the legislation in the world, I wouldn't trust a telecoms guy as far as I can throw the monthly check.

The world renowned internet traffic tracking powerhouse, Alexa, has analysed the visitor demographic for very major website that has a pulse. But should they be believed?



What do these statistics taken directly from our servers tell you? To Alexa it says that more Brits and Australians have visited the Pisstakers than Americans. Sounds like a statement saying that the 20% minority visitors from the Commonwealth are more worthy than 80% of our visitors from the US!!.

Maybe they are adopting a tried and tested marketing ploy from the USA. Say something outrageous enough times with enough conviction, and eventually it will become accepted as fact. Alexa is accurate, Alexa is accurate, Alexa is... nope still reads like a pile of manipulated bull.

Gudday and cheerio chin chin oh Ozzie and Brit minnows.

Search plus wiki =swiki. A Swiki cloud is one of the search options on The Pisstakers and the feature has been evolving quietly but very positively. Looking around the Swiki site, the developers really did live up to their tag at the bottom of every page - working hard and asking for ways to make Swiki better. Yo swicki, wazzup?

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Tags: Swicki

The on-line reality for webmasters is that many nasty hackers are out there lurking, just waiting for an opportunity to render your blog unreadable. When attacked by experts, your site can be sucked dry of text, rejigged into a pile of pixels or literally left smouldering. So how do you protect yourself from such an attack? Forewarned is forearmed! This is what the Pisstakers had to recover from at 12.40am last night.

First sign of trouble

Some unknown graphic appears on screen, unannounced.

The first clue that this is bad news

There is text floating past this window. I recognised solitaire, and many other words associated with The Pisstakers

Worst case scenario - total text removal

At 12.40, the Pisstakers was no more. Thank you Net Disaster!

How to avoid a Net Disaster

Back up, back-up, back-up. Please make sure you check the Deal of the Day for a huge hard drive so you can back up your blog many times over. We did and were back in operation a few seconds after being denuded.

Do not surf irresponsibly. Rest assured, any one of dozens of destructive endings could be yours, if you click willy nilly!

Do not complete the following form!

Everyone is blabbing on about the fabled Agloco pay-to-surf scheme, but what about Blingo? Ever heard of their win-prizes-for-search deal? Do a maximum 10 searches a day from their google-driven search bar and have a chance at winning anything from a car to a cinema ticket. Crazy isn't it, but according to CBS Philadelphia it is true.

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Since Google bought Youtube, 1.6 billion words have been written on ways for Google to earn money from on-line videos. The answer finally surfaced on Digg rip-off Netscape. Sharing ad revenue with video uploaders. Der, two things of note here.

4 Netscape members voted on the biggest story to hit on-line video in years - go Netscape, go!

And two, what were journalists doing, writing millions of words of conjecture, when three words, "copy Revver model" would have sufficed? Or are another 1.6 billion characters going to say this ad revenue-sharing model isn't a viable paradigm for Google to earn their money back many times over from Youtube?

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The third and final part of how to avoid the paypal cons.

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We have all received the plea from http://www.paypal.com saying something like, "We are updating our records and need to know a password and other account details before the sun sets, else we will cancel your account."

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Paypal is a fast growing on-line money laundering payment system. It is intrinsically secure against techno-busters, but spammers have ways and means of manipulating their way into accounts. It is a called Social engineering.

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In a Boag's World podcast last year, it was made quite clear that SEO is over-rated in the brave new world of social bookmarking and news sites. The likes of Digg let users decide what is and isnt good content. Wow! Instead of worrying about robots we can blog to readers? Content could be king after all.

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The threat to freedom of speech and unfair competition on the internet is very real. Them baby bells and not so baby Internet Providers are eyeing up lots of monopolistic options to make an extra buck. A Net Neutrality bill forbidding any entity from assuming unfair control of their tubes and pipes is required. But have you noticed the ads. Where are the toothless users, the badly dressed surfers, teenagers, old folk without a clue beyond Hotmail? If it is "Our" net, include everyone in the battle.

Imagine doing a search for tree (as an example) and you only get relevant results from web sites linking to Flaffle. Crazy concept, asking webmasters to manually link only their best pages to the search engine? Surely the best way, the Google way, is to let robots gather as much mud as possible to throw at the wall and hope something sticks in searches? Flaffle is fresh, minimalist, and keeps searches relevant, and free of trickery. Try and Flaffle it!

Today, on December 2nd 2006 we had a peek into the future. Scheduled for release on December 11th, this Businessweek article states that Google are joining the settlement trail, reportedly offering media companies hundreds of millions of dollars in order to bail newly acquired Youtube out of their copyright-infringeing donkey do.

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80 million on MySpace, 25 million on Bebo, (yes who?) and then there is Friendster, Classmates, Xanga, MSN Spaces, Yahoo 360, hi5, LinkedIn, LiveJournal, Sconex, CrushSpot, Multiply, Orkut, Tagworld, Tagged, Piczo, Mooble, WAYN, ASmallWorld, MyYearBook, Cyworld, ProfileHeaven, Fropper and EveryonesConnected. (The Guardian UK) Where do all these people come from, and how do they find time to work, study, and maintain real-world relationships?

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Look around the web for hints and tips on how to create a podcast and I bet they all say, get a good musician-quality microphone and a sound mixer and a wind shield and a ... What a load of twaddle. I bet Boing Boing have got all that equipment, and look what it did for them. Follow our 10 steps to podcast nirvana.

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Have you noticed how you cannot lose nowadays? There are rewards just for entering competitions. We get prizes for losing. Kids even get a grade plus a certificate for "Did not fail". After going through Wordtracker, checking the relevancy of our keywords, we need a little love right now as well. The words peppered throughout our site were clearly derived from gut feelings, not SEO knowledge!

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Dear User, (don't they mean loser?)

We are Andy and John the directors of MSN, (yeah, right!) sorry for the interruption but this is an email to inform you that MSN is closing down. (OMG quick, phone Bill Gates, warn him of his impending unemployment.)

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