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.

Today I have been struggling for a tech idea to write about. But never let it be said that I am lost for new material. Ka-ching, a very thorough post from Untwisted Vortex saved my bacon and filled me with original inspiration.

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 - ie I get loads of links to stuff written about me and the Pisstakers. Interesting innit.

Oh yeah, Google alerts are very easy to set up and (gross exaggeration) they are really cool.

Before I drift into "topic rehash mode as performed by thousands of other blogs" go see RT. He explains better than me how useful the Google alerts are for tracking backlinks. I am just a pisstaker, after all.

Technorati Alert

I just thought of a new angle to this conversation. Google Alerts cut out the need for bloggers to ever go to Technorati to see who has been writing about them. Yeah, that is pretty useful, because the comprehensive listings from Google alerts will prove that Technorati don't have every link logged, which is proof that their rankings are less than reliable and not indicative of everything that is going on on the internet! Yes sir, Google alerts provide more comprehensive "internet chatter" info than Technorati. Google are great. Technorati suck el grande.

Wait a minute, a new alert - Google aren't great. They are a good idea turned into a huge bad behemoth that has its fingers and hooks on every drop of personal info on the internet. Quick, stop the alerts, you are just playing into their hands. They will work out what you like and try sell you something you don't want.

Before this degenerates any further, go read RT's post about Google Alerts, it is much more illuminating than this. And don't forget to follow the advice in this other post of his and leave a comment.

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!!!!

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 of 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. wtf is RSS!

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.

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!

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!

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!!

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.

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.

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?

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).

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?

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,